Influence of H1N1 pandemic on attitude and intended behaviour of university students: A cross sectional study from south India

Background: To understand the attitude and behaviour in institutionalised population is critically important to undertake any preventive and health education measure. During H1N1 outbreak a lot of preventive and health education measures have been taken in our institute. To assess the impact of these measures we aimed to evaluate the knowledge, perception and behaviour changes among university students towards H1N1 pandemic. Objective: To evaluate the knowledge, attitude and behaviour among young institutelized population towards H1N1 influenza pandemic and its influence on hand washing behaviourMethods: A cross sectional questionnaire based survey was done among 957 university students in south India. The survey was based on assessing the knowledge regarding influenza virus and its vaccination, attitude and motivation factors towards hand washing. Results: Out of total 957 Respondents, 62.4% were males and 37.6% were females. Overall, 79.6% and 88.3% of respondents had correct knowledge regarding route of transmission. Female participants have more knowledge compared to male counterpart regarding current practices, self-protection (P<0.001) and vaccination of H1N1 (P<0.05), Participants having acquaintances with recent flu like symptoms were positively correlated with recent flu like symptoms (P value<0.001). Males are more likely to perceive hand wash as effective means of preventing the infection (P value *lt;0.01). After gender stratification, both groups reported to have high perceived severity (P=0.778) towards H1N1 infection.Conclusion: Better measures can be taken during second wave of H1N1 pandemic as students respond differently according to knowledge they acquire, hand hygiene habits tends to change during pre and post endemic period. Positive health behaviour amongst young students helps in prevention of influenza transmission.