Study of the degree of general knowledge of dog owners about Canine Visceral Leishmaniasis in the municipality of Paulista, SP - 2012.

• Grant number: 11/15540-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2012
• End date: June 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Veterinary Medicine - Preventive Veterinary Medicine
• Principal Investigator: José Rafael Módolo
• Grantee: Jéssica Cristina Melice Gouveia
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia (FMVZ). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Leishmaniasis is a zoonosis which is considered a serious public health problem. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 350 million people are exposed to its risk considering an approximate record of two million new cases of different clinical forms a year. In Brazil, the importance of Canine Visceral Leishmaniasis lies not only in its high incidence and wide distribution, but also in the possibility of assuming serious and lethal forms when it is associated to the bad nutrition and infection concomitant condition. The growing urbanization of the disease which happened in the last 20 years brings forth the argument about the control strategies applied. The disease control strategies implemented so far were incapable of eliminating the transmission and stopping the occurrence of new epidemics. The knowledge about the circulation of Canine Visceral Leishmaniasis (CVL), such as its perception by the local population, is highly valuable to the establishment of control campaigns, because it moves the community to sanitary actions. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the dog' owners' general knowledge about the CVL before and after the occurrence of the disease and to obtain information to help elaborating a more precise and directed continuing education proposal in health, referring to CVL in Lençóis Paulista city, SP. The inquiry which has already been applied before the occurrence of the disease in 2009 in the city will be applied one more time after the occurrence, with the purpose of evaluating the evolution of the dogs' owner's general knowledge. 120 health agents from Lencóis Paulista city, SP, who will work through the inquiry process, will attend a training given by a professional team which works in this area and from UNESP in Botucatu-SP. The training will be given based in a brochure support material which was specially developed in a focused way. It contains general instructions which guide the interviewers in the work field, helping them through the correct way of performing the interviews, to guarantee the precision of the data collected. There are 384 participants, who must be distributed in five regions according to the following structure center (46), Q1 (134), Q2 (60), Q3 (106), Q4 (38), embracing the whole 30km2 of urban territorial area, keeping the geographical proportionality of each neighborhood. The information will be recorded in a database and evaluated, according to the frequency distribution of relative and absolute frequency, the percentage distribution of the information, specially highlighting the quantitative analysis considering a 95% confidence interval. All of the arguments from this study will be made considering a 5% significance level.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

GOUVEIA, Jéssica Cristina Melice. Estudo do grau de conhecimento geral dos donos de cães sobre a leishmaniose visceral canina no município de Lençois Paulista-SP-2012. 2014. Master's Dissertation - Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia. Botucatu Botucatu.