Abstract

HEALTH AWARENESS AND PRACTICE OF THE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN PABNA UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, BANGLADESH

Md. Sanowar Hossain*, G.M. Masud Parvez, Md. Golam Rabbani, Ranjan Kumar Sarkar, Sadia Tasnim, Sadia Sultana Shammi, Farjana Yesmin, Nirupama Thandar, Adity Roy, Sheuli Khatun, Shaila Sharmin, Shahira Sultana, Ashique-Ur-Rahman, Sk. Tanshia Taznin and Fatema Tuz Zahura

ABSTRACT

Good health is a desire to all people as well as to the young university students. But lack of proper health knowledge and practices can hamper the maintenance of good health. The study was designed to find out the knowledge and practices on health issue of the undergraduate students of Pabna University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh. A total of 1300 students were directly interviewed using structured questionnaire during August to September, 2019. The major finding shows that, most of the samples are not aware of proper maintaining their health. For example, 84.38% of them do not undergo periodic health checkup, 11.38% of the sample smoke or drink alcohol or take narcotic agents, 58.08% of the sample do not plan their diet according to the nutritional requirement while only 42.31% of the sample take their food in a regular time basis. 71.92% of the samples do not undergo regular physical exercise and even only 36.15% of them treat their diseases regularly with the prescription of a doctor while most of them are irregular to visit doctor during illness and take medication of their own. Although most of them (79.23%) did not faced any severe or chronic disease during the last one year, they do not know some of the important body parameters like blood glucose level, known by only 9.54% of the sample, blood pressure, known by only 46.23% of the sample while body weight and blood group is known by most of the sample. Proper initiative to ensure knowledge on health issue by health counseling as well as ready availability of services and health needs can improve the overall health condition of the students.

Keywords: Health knowledge, health awareness, periodic health checkup, body parameters, planning diet, health counseling.