SOCIETAL AWARENESS AND STIGMA OF TUBERCULOSIS IN MALAYSIA: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease which is transmitted through the air. This disease damages the lungs and other organs in the human body. TB is highly contagious and spreads when TB patients cough, sneeze, spit and talk. Due to the ease of infection, anyone can contract the disease. Unfortunately, not many people are aware about TB. This lack of knowledge and awareness is a problem anywhere around the globe. Therefore, the study attempts to examine the level of public awareness regarding this disease and propose a more effective approach to address the issue of insufficient communication of information. Specifically, this study has two main objectives: (i) to review the level of awareness on TB among university students in Malaysia; (ii) to investigate society’s stigma towards TB patients; and (iii) to identify the best strategy to improve TB awareness in the society. This study employs a quantitative approach to data collection and analysis. Questionnaire of 400 units were randomly distributed amongst students at Universiti Sains Malaysia and the results were analyzed using the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings showed that although the respondents have heard of the TB disease, a majority of them were not sure about the factors causing this disease. The study also noted that a majority of respondents have negative stigma towards TB patients. Based on the analyses of findings, the study proposes several solutions in the effort to improve the awareness among students about TB. The findings indicated that students prefer television, social networking websites and newspapers as the information source for obtaining information on TB. This study also provided some suggestions for future researches to add to the existing literature about the dissemination of information especially on infectious diseases and TB in particular