The Journal
Materials and Methods
The study was conducted among 430 medical
professionals in Trivandrum District of Kerala in
the month of August 2014. Trivandrum district
was selected for the survey as it comprises of
several Hospitals and Institutions, all being
upgraded to the level of All Indian Institute Of
Medical Science, New Delhi.
This study was approved by The Institutional
Review Board of Priyadarshini Dental College
and Hospital and the permission to conduct the
study was obtained from Institutional Ethical
Committee of Priyadarshini Dental College and
Hospital. The sample size was estimated to be
424 with 80%power and 0.5% α error.
We approached the respective Head of the
Institutions and explained the designation of our
study and asked them to grant us permission to
conduct the same. A questionnaire with a set
of20 questions based on the knowledge,
attitude and awareness
S. No.
among medical professionals towards bio-
terrorism was fabricated initially and the
modifications were implicated as per the
feedbacks from the medical professionals of
Priyadarshini Dental College and Hospital. The
finalized in-depth questionnaire was then
distributed among the medical professionals in
person and was then collected immediately
after completion.
Results
The total number of medical professionals was
430 out of which 273(63.3%) were males and
157(36.7%)
Werefemales. On the appraisal of the response
rates, there was a surprising statistics as shown
in the figure1 Response of knowledge, Attitude
and Awareness based questions on
bioterrorism among medical professionals are
shown in Table 1, Table 2, and Table 3
respectively.
QUESTIONS
YES
N (%) NO
N (%)
1. Do you think ANTHRAX and PLAUGE has the
potential to spread from person to person? N = 402
(93.6%) N = 28
(6.4%)
2. Do you think CHICKEN POX and BOTULISM are
potential bioterrorism treats? N = 112
(26.2%) N = 318
(73.8%)
3. Do you think influenza like illness is most common
presenting syndrome associated with bioterrorism? N = 261
(60.7%) N = 169
(39.3%)
4. Have you perceived the ability to identify and
recognize a bioterrorism event in human population? N = 34
(7.9%) N = 396
(92.1%)
5. Have you ever been trained for dealing with
bioterrorism event? N = 234
(54.5%) N = 196
(45.5%)
Table 1 : Knowledge based questions on Bioterrorism
29
Vol. 14 No. 2
May-August 2018