Knowledge and awareness of hepatitis B among households in Malaysia : a community-based cross-sectional survey

  • Background: Hepatitis B (HepB) is a major public health concern in Malaysia yet little is known about knowledge and awareness of this infection in the country. Such information is essential for designing effective intervention strategies for HepB prevention and control. The aim of this study was to characterize knowledge and awareness regarding HepB in Malaysia and to identify their associated sociodemographic determinants. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional survey was conducted between January and May 2016 in Selangor state of Malaysia. A two-stage cluster random sampling design was used and one adult member of selected households was interviewed face-to-face. Logistic regression was used to estimate the differences in knowledge and awareness between groups. Results: A total of 764 households completed the interviews and were included in the final analysis. Only 36.9 and 38.8% of the participants had good knowledge and awareness, respectively. The factors associated with good knowledge were being in the 35–44 year age group, Malay ethnicity, high educational attainment and high family income. Being Chinese, being older and having high educational attainment were determinants of having good awareness towards HepB. Participants who had good knowledge were 2.5 times more likely to also have good awareness (OR: 2.41, 95% CI: 1.78–3.26, p < 0.001). Conclusions: This study reveals a low level of knowledge and awareness of HepB among households in Malaysia. This finding highlights the need to improve public knowledge and awareness through well-designed programs targeting vulnerable groups in order to reduce hepatitis B virus transmission and achieve the governmental target of eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health concern by 2030.
Metadaten
Author:Yogambigai RajamoorthyORCiD, Niazlin Mohd Taib, Subramaniam Munusamy, Samsul AnwarORCiD, Abram Luther WagnerORCiD, Mudatsir MudatsirORCiD, Ruth MüllerORCiD, Ulrich KuchORCiDGND, Jan David Alexander GronebergORCiDGND, Harapan HarapanORCiD, Aye Aye Khin
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-485843
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-6375-8
ISSN:1471-2458
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30630464
Parent Title (English):BMC public health
Publisher:BioMed Central
Place of publication:London
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2019
Date of first Publication:2019/01/10
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2019/01/15
Tag:Awareness; Hepatitis B; Hepatitis B infection; Hepatitis B vaccination; Knowledge
Volume:19
Issue:1, Art. 47
Page Number:11
First Page:1
Last Page:11
Note:
Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
HeBIS-PPN:446477257
Institutes:Medizin / Medizin
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0