Knowledge, prevalence and prevention of dermatophyte infections among primary school pupils in Uyo Metropolis

The study examined the knowledge, prevalence and prevention of dermatophyte infection among primary school pupils in Uyo metropolis. Four research questions were raised and the corresponding hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. A descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The population of this study consisted of 420 pupils from 20 selected primary schools. The selected schools were 5 schools each from the northern, eastern, southern, and western Uyo metropolis. The researcher developed an instrument titled ‘Knowledge-of-Infectious-Disease-Questionnaire’ for data collection. Face validity, content validity, construct validity, and reliability testing were used to validate the instrument. Simple percentage was used for answering research questions while Chi-square (X2) test was used for testing the hypotheses. An average of 61.59% of the pupils lacked knowledge of dermatophyte infection while 70.6% of them already had the infections indicating a lack of significant knowledge, but significant spread of dermatophyte infection respectively, among the pupils at p<0.05. Furthermore, an average of 52.2% of the pupils showed no significant knowledge of the causes, prevention and treatment of the infection, while 53.2% had their academic performances negatively affected due to the dermatophyte infection. Based on these findings, it was concluded that although there exists a high prevalence of dermatophyte infection among primary school pupils, knowledge, prevention and treatment is however low. Academic performance is also negatively impacted due to the infections. It is recommended that parents should keenly observe their wards for symptoms of these infections and promptly effect treatments to avoid disease spread onto classmates. Also, proper enlightenment of these children about dermatophyte infections should be done both by the parents and Government Health Workers.