Preventing Infectious Disease Through Knowledge, Attitude And Practice: A Case Study Of Tuberculosis Patients In Malaysia

This study aims to assess the level of knowledge of and preventive actions against infectious disease among tuberculosis patients in Malaysia using the Knowledge-Attitude-Practice model. Quantitative method using survey design was employed to collect data from 1,587 tuberculosis patients in Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak as sample respondents. Ethical approval was obtained from the Ministry of Health, Malaysia. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and chi-squared tests. The findings showed that the level of knowledge of and preventive actions against infectious diseases is high while the level of prevention in terms of patients’ attitudes of how they feel about preventing the disease is moderate. This study also found that gender does not affect tuberculosis preventive actions, and the levels of knowledge, attitude and practice among tuberculosis patients were also not significant. In fact, there were no differences reported based on the age of respondents. Interestingly, the results showed that there were significant differences based on the location of a patient’s residence. The study concludes with theoretical and practical contributions as well as avenues for future research.