Abstract Details

Title Awareness of Stroke and Knowledge of its Warning Signs and Risk Factors in a Developing Country

Topic

Presentation(s) (-)

Poster/Presentation
Number 133

Objective

Background Early treatment and prevention require cooperation and timely interaction of patients and care givers. Knowing the level of awareness and the popular means of gaining knowledge are essential to build community educational program.

Design/Methods This is a cross sectional community-based study using a clustering design on adult healthy and outpatient visitors to major 3 hospitals in Khartoum, Sudan. An interview questionnaire was used to collect information on personal data, familiarity with term stroke, knowledge of warning symptoms and risk factors and the immediate response as a victim or a care-giver. We also explored the source and the preferred means of gaining knowledge about the disease.

Results We interviewed 384 individuals from the 3 sites. Only 157 (41%) of the participants recognized or heard of the term stroke. The most commonly cited source of information was a patient (27%), followed by word of mouth (22.8%) and television (21.5%). Doctors were among the least mentioned (8.9%). Of those who heard of stroke 69% were able to identify 3 or more warning symptoms and 55% were able to name the same number of risk factors. Hypertension was the most quoted risk factor (87%) . Higher level of academic education is associated with better knowledge. Of the participants 66.5% would volunteer to take immediate action if they encountered a person with stroke. However, only 15% were able to correctly recall the ambulance phone number. Having doctor and patient as sources of information was associated with a higher level of knowledge.

Conclusions The study clearly revealed lack of public’s knowledge about stroke, its warning symptoms and risk factors in the community investigated. Improvement in stroke awareness level can be achieved by health education utilizing the media tools preferred by the targeted population

Authors/Disclosures
	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file
Elfadil M. Hassan, MBBS, FRCP (Khartoum Fertility Centre)	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file

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