Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices about Rabies in Urban Slums of Amritsar City (Punjab), India

Rabies is a zoonotic, viral disease infecting mammals. It is a dead end for the virus and dead end for the man. But unfortunately, poorly known are the opinions and practices of people following dog bite. Hence the current study was planned with the objective of assessing knowledge, attitude and practices about rabies in slum areas of Amritsar.

The study was conducted in the peri-urban slums of Amritsar city. The sample size of 400 was selected using Population Proportion to Size method in the different slum pockets. A pretested proforma was used to gather information after taking informed consent of the participants. Data was compiled and analyzed using SPSS 19.0 windows evaluation version.

A vast majority (92.7%) of the respondents could correctly tell what rabies is including its symptoms, but rabies is always fatal was known only to 34.6% of the respondents. Only 46.5% subjects knew that antirabies vaccine (ARV) is available free of cost at district hospitals. Among bite afflicted, 52.8% of them took ARV. The better off were more likely to seek ARV (OR=7.43, CI=1.66 to 33.26). Similarly, literates were 2.3 times more likely to have ARV than the illiterates with OR =2.31 (CI = 1.32–4.06). The ARV was taken from private sector by a huge (71.9%). The attending health care personnel was qualified in only 35.2% of the cases. All (100%) of the dog bite afflicted performed local wound toilet and 76.5% of cases tried different alternate modalities as well. Having no resources came out to be the single most important factor for not getting ARV.

There is a knowledge gap regarding rabies which requires urgent attention.