Community Perception to Risk of Dengue Infection and Treatment Seeking Behaviour

Abstract

Dengue Virus (DENV) infection is still an important public health problems including in Indonesia. Dengue prevention and control program must be based on integrated knowledge also related to public perceptions of this disease. The aim of this study is to find out community perception on their risk to have dengue infection and also their treatment seeking behaviour. This is qualitiatative study which involved 9 informants from community in Banyumas Regency, Central Java, Indonesia. Data collection was obtained by indept interview to the informants and data was analyzed by content analysis. Result of this study highlighted that most informants feel that they had less risk to contract with DENV infection. This perception could affect the less prevention and control effort which carried out in community. However, for they tend to seek treatment to health facility promptly after the symptoms of dengue appeared. Informants also emphasize that they support the prevention and control for minimize the dengue cases.

Factors influencing healthcare seeking in patients with dengue: Systematic review

“…Regarding risk perception, people who regarded dengue as a severe disease tend to seek help earlier [14,39]. Having had (or not having had) dengue in the past could be either barrier or facilitator to healthcare seeking in dengue [33,34,38].…”

“…Lack of knowledge about dengue [13,14] Able to name ≥1 symptoms of dengue [32] Unable to recognise symptoms of dengue [27,28] Classifying dengue as the flu, common cold or normal fever [13,[29][30][31] Have knowledge of dengue [14] Unable to name symptoms of dengue [32] Able to recognise symptoms of dengue [27,39] 9…”

“…Do not regard dengue as a serious disease [14] Undermining fever [14] Regard dengue as a serious disease [14,39] Having persistent symptoms after selfmedication [14, 39,…”

“…Inconvenient operating hours of health facilities [13,37] Long travelling distance and time to the health facility [35,36,42] The assigned hospital is not the closest point of care (healthcare) [41] Long waiting time for healthcare services [35,36,42] Lack of attention and resources allocation on healthcare facilities [35,36,42] Oversaturated emergency services [35,36,41,42] Convenient operating hours of health facilities [39] Shorter travelling distance and time to the health facility [42] Health centre is located in close proximity [37,39] Health centre offers patients home visits [37] 7…”

“…Four factors emerged under the organisational domain: access to healthcare, cost of healthcare, healthcare personnel and quality of health service. Access to healthcare (7 of 20 studies) was the most commonly reported factor, where travel distance to health centres [35,36,41,42], inconvenient operating hours [13,37,39], long waiting times [35,36,42] and overcrowding [35,36,41,42] were found to be barriers for people to seek healthcare for dengue. Quality of health service (6 of 20 studies) was also reported to deter dengue healthcare seeking, especially in underequipped health facilities [13,29,37,41,42].…”