ABSTRACT
AIM: To determine the effect of habits, traditions, and beliefs on seizure diagnosis and provide first aid in Taif city, KSA. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 297 participants from Taif, KSA. An Arabic self-administrated electronic questionnaire was used that included different parts to collect the information from participants; characters, previous history of seizures, habits, beliefs and traditions about the seizures and first aid. RESULTS: Most of the participants had an average level of knowledge by 20.88, 47.14 and 31.99% of the participants had a poor, average and good level of knowledge about seizures and epilepsy. 70.0% of our participants knew that seizure is a symptom associated with many diseases; 40.7% knew that hypoglycemia can cause a seizure, while 37 and 32.3% did not know seizure treatment and whether Hijama and Cupping therapy were enough to treat seizure; 26.9 and 35.4% of the participants responded by neither putting something hard on the patient's mouth nor opening the patient's mouth by force to protect him from swallowing his tongue, respectively. Only 17.2% agreed on not calling the ambulance for all seizure cases. Participants aged between 20 and 29 and single had a significant higher percent of good knowledge with no significant association between gender, income and educational level and the participant's level of knowledge. CONCLUSION: There is a lack of knowledge and misconceptions about aspects related to seizures among the studied participants. It is recommended to raise awareness and correct false misconceptions about providing first aid to seizure patients.
ABSTRACT
Background: Viral influenza, one of the global public health problems is specifically important in Saudi Arabia due to high susceptibility of transmission in hajj and umrah seasons (Islamic pilgrimage to the Mecca), as it has the ability to spread widely to a large proportion, in addition the disease has a higher rate of complications that might lead to death. Vaccination is an important strategy in prevention of viral influenza. Design and methods: The study aimed to describe the association between uptake of influenza vaccine with knowledge as well as identify the barriers that prevent vaccination among Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU) non-health colleges students. A descriptive cross-sectional study design was undertaken, including 385 students from non-health colleges using a convenience sampling technique. Data was collected using an Arabic self-administered online questionnaire Analysis done by JMP program. IRB approval as well as informed consent were taken. Results: The uptake of the influenza vaccine was 15.3% in the current year and 56.8% in the previous years. No significant association was found between knowledge, and uptake of the vaccine. For the unvaccinated students, the most common encounter barriers stated by study population were concerns regarding the vaccine effectiveness, reduction of immunity the uncertainty of complete protection in a percentage of 12.0% for all. Conclusions: Although the level of vaccine uptake is low for this year, it is not associated with knowledge. There were some barriers that need to be tackled by health education programs.
