Knowledge and awareness about thalassemia among undergraduate students in UiTM Puncak Alam / Nurul Mahfuzah Baharuddin

Thalassemia is the common inherited blood disorders throughout the world. It causes body to synthesis low level of red blood cells and haemoglobin. There are higher prevalence of thalassemia mainly among Mediterranean people, Middle East countries, and Asia including Malaysia. It was estimated that approximately 2.1 per 1000 infants in Malaysia will be affected with thalassemia every year while 4.5% of Malaysian population were the carriers of beta thalassemia. There were studies that investigated the level of awareness and knowledge among Malaysian public but there is no data that focus specifically on Malaysian students. Thus, this study was conducted to determine the level of awareness and knowledge about thalassemia among undergraduate students in UiTM Puncak Alam based on their year of study and faculty's. A questionnaire based survey was done randomly on 367 undergraduate students in UiTM Puncak Alam from Faculty of Pharmacy, Health Sciences, and Business Management by using stratified random sampling. A Modified version of Thalassemia Awareness Questionnaire (TAQ) was used to determine the level of awareness and knowledge about thalassemia among undergraduate students in UiTM Puncak Alam. Non-parametric Chi-square Test was used to investigate the significant differences between respondent's faculty and their year of study with the level of awareness and knowledge about thalssemia. Results showed that the level of awareness among undergraduate students was high with 93.6% of them were aware about thalassemia. There were also significant differences between respondent's faculty and their year of study with the level of awareness and knowledge about thalassemia (p < 0.05). It showed that students from Health Sciences were more knowledgeable about thalassemia compared to Pharmacy and Business Management students.