Assessment of knowledge and awareness towards diabetes mellitus in Majuli, Assam of India: A Case Study

Background: Inadequate awareness about real dimension of diabetes mellitus among the general public of India is a key problem for increase incidence of diabetes. The status of awareness varies from place to place which necessitates case studies in small areas having geographical and cultural importance. Objectives: This study is aimed to assess the level of knowledge and awareness of diabetes mellitus among the people of river island Majuli, Assam of India which, will be of a great help to identify areas of knowledge that might require additional efforts to increase. Methodology: A cross-sectional survey is conducted to meet the objectives. There are 260 subjects scientifically selected for the study. The respondents are required to answer 32 questions focusing on different aspects of diabetes. A simple scoring method is used to convert qualitative response to quantitative ones and hence the total scores are calculated for each individual. Further, to test whether there is significant differences in awareness status of the people w.r.t. various socio-economic and demographic factors, non parametric tests such as Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskar Wallis test have been used as p-p plot shows data do not follow normal distribution. Results: The study reveals that level of awareness towards diabetes mellitus varies with respect to different socio-economic and demographic factors, viz., sex, age, marital status, caste, family structure, family history of having diabetes mellitus, occupation and income among respondents are significantly different. Only an exceptional finding observed from this study is that although, level of awareness increases towards diabetes with level of education. Conclusion: It can be concluded that inspite of the government and other organizations have been taking different steps to enhance the awareness level of the people towards various diseases having more prevalence, its impact on the society of the study area is not up to the mark.