The Journal
Among the set of 20 questions, 4 questions
were statistically significant which is shown in
the following Table 4.
S. No.
QUESTIONS
BASIS p-VALUE
1. Do you think influenza like illness is most common
presenting syndrome associated with bio-terrorism? Knowledge 0.005
2. Hhave you ever been trained for dealing with bio-terrorism
event? Knowledge 0.042
3. Have you perceived ability to recognize oral manifestations
of bio-terrorism agent? Awareness 0.009
4. Willingness to provide assistance in response to bio-
terrorism event? Attitude 0.031
Table 4 : Comparison of gender across each question
*as p value ≤ 0.05 is statistically significant.
Discussion
The results throw some light on the physicians
‘awareness; attitude and knowledge level of
bioterrorism and also it reveals us that the
majority of population is well aware of
thescenario of bioterrorism event, but lack
experienceor training ability in managing a
bioterrorism event.
Only 7.9% of doctors had perceived training
sessions in bioterrorism management. A
statistical figure of 60% only could identify the
oral manifestation of bioterrorism. The main
fortitude in our study is that medical
professionals covered inclusive of both under
graduate as well as post graduates which cover
about 76% of the wholesome of medical
professionals in the district of Trivandrum,
Kerala. Among 430, 387 (90.2%) feel that the
importance of bio-terrorism in dentistry is
important and 295 (68.8%) say that inclusion of
knowledge based bio-terrorism in the
curriculum of dental school is worth full.
31
Also, in research about physician’s knowledge
of bioterrorism, the results showed that 237
doctors (74.2%) had not received any
education on bioterrorism and stated that they
have little awareness (3). Another study on 291
samples including nurses, physicians and
medical students showed low knowledge of
health services providers about bioterrorism(4).
Due to less awareness and lack of opportunity
more than 90%physicians expressed
willingness to participate in awareness
development and training program.
There is a strong urge among the medical
professionals to enlighten themselves about
bio-terrorism. They feel the importance of
awareness of mass disasters and are eagerly
willing to participate in training programs while
only a negligible percentage which has come
across a clinical case shows little exposure.
There is an incubation period before the clinical
manifestation of the diseases that have been
used as weapons in bioterrorist attack become
apparent; the initial reorganization that an
attack has been perpetrated has been difficult.
Vol. 14 No. 2
May-August 2018