Community and School-Based Health Education for Dengue Control in Rural Cambodia: A Process Evaluation

5 Dec 2007

Source: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases (see original article or PDF)

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Author Summary

Health education is essential for the control of diseases such as dengue, ensuring that community members understand the mechanisms of infection and the key behaviours or activities that need to be addressed to prevent transmission, reduce severe disease and avoid fatalities. In Cambodia, health education for dengue control is provided in primary schools, at village health centres and by the National Dengue Control Program. However, these educational programs are accorded low priority, strategies and materials are not evaluated on a routine basis, messages are sometimes confusing, and health staff and teachers lack the training, time and opportunities to deliver educational messages. Recommendations to villages are not always practical or effective in preventing mosquito bites, and funds are not available to provide new educational materials. While school children and their parents therefore have some familiarity with the behaviour and habitat of the aedes mosquito and the environmental factors that contribute to dengue fever, their knowledge is uneven and knowledge is rarely translated to reduce the risk of infection. Community involvement in the prevention and control of dengue is essential, but will not be effective while health education is poorly resourced and irregular and lessons on prevention do not result in action.

Khun, Manderson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.