Awareness on rabies and its prevention among anganwadi workers

Abstract

Background: Anganwadi workers play an important role in primary health care for promoting community health. Since they work in the same community of their residence, the advice provided by them is acceptable to the community. They are supposed to provide awareness on health and motivate them for accessing proper health care, locally available. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to assess the awareness on rabies and its prevention among the anganwadi workers. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted from July 2017 to November 2017, among the anganwadi workers coming under the rural field practice area of a medical college. The data were collected using a pre-tested, semistructured pro forma in the local language and analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: The study included 37 anganwadi workers. The overall knowledge on rabies and its prevention was 11.70 + 2.68 out of 20 questions. All the study subjects had heard of rabies, but only 24.32% had correct knowledge on the modes of rabies transmission, and only 10.81% knew the animals transmitting rabies. On the contrary, 94.59% subjects knew the correct first aid following animal bite, and 45.95% subjects knew that anti-rabies vaccine was available both at government and private health facilities. Conclusion: The knowledge on prevention of rabies has to be further improved; having a complete knowledge ultimately improves the awareness on prevention of rabies in the community and in turn helps in eliminating rabies.