A comparative study on knowledge and awareness regarding type-2 diabetes mellitus and its complications among urban and rural patients

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Type-2 diabetes mellitus (DM) is the most challenging public health problem. Most of the people are unaware of the disease and its preventive measures and complications. It is important to acknowledge the gap in the knowledge and awareness of the disease to prevent the disease and effectively plan public health care. METHODOLOGY: This was a cross-sectional study with the objective to assess the level of knowledge and awareness regarding type-2 DM and its complications among urban and rural population and to compare them. The sample size was calculated as 404 among >30 years of age with Type-2 DM with >1 year of duration with or without complications. Data was collected on demographic details, knowledge, awareness, complications and lifestyle modifications by using the structured questionnaire. The collected data was compared among urban and rural patients and the association was seen between different factors by appropriate statistical test. RESULTS: The knowledge on normal blood sugar was (45.6% and 27.2%) in urban and rural, HbA1C (63.8% and 49.5%), family history of diabetes (59.4% and 43.1%), whether DM2 is a multi system disorder, monitoring of blood sugar levels and frequency of monitoring and checkups were found to be more in the urban compare to the rural with P < 0.05. The awareness on complications like the rate of complications with increase in time (66.3% and 57.0%), awareness of diabetic foot (52.9% and 37.1%), prone to infections (67.3% and 58.9%), prone to COVID 19 infection (74.7% and 64.9%), most common organ involved as the complication arise was kidney (39.6% and 33.7%) with P < 0.05. CONCLUSION: The study suggests that there is a need to improve knowledge about DM and its complications, and there is a need for diabetes-specific health awareness campaigns on behavior and lifestyle changes, adherence to treatment and self-care.