Assessment of village health volunteers role perceptions about prevention and control of dengue haemorrhagic fever in Thungsong district, Nakhon Si Thammarat province, Thailand

Abstract

Dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) is a major public health problem in the country. Village health volunteers are leaders in the community who play an important role to solve DHF problems. The objective of the present study was to assess the role perception and role performance of village health volunteers regarding prevention and control of DHF. The cross-sectional descriptive design was employed, and data were collected from a total of 335 village health volunteers who were selected by means of stratified random sampling from high-risk and low-risk villages. Data were collected using questionnaires, and data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Chi-square, and Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient. The findings of the study revealed that there were more female village health volunteers than male, they were between 40 and 49 years old, most completed elementary education, and most were agriculturists. In addition, most had a fair to good level of role perception, but they had a low level of role performance. The findings also indicated that gender, income, and number of previous trainings were related to role perception of village health volunteers regarding prevention and control of dengue hemorrhagic fever and that village volunteers’ role perception was associated with their role performance (p-value < 0.05). Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that training should be organized for village health volunteers, especially those who have a low level of role performance such as female village health volunteers and village health volunteers who are not agriculturists. Furthermore, some tasks of village health volunteers such as organizing motivational activities, acquiring health education materials on DHF, and coordinating with different groups or clubs in the community may be too difficult for village health volunteers to carry out alone. Thus, cooperation from public health officials and various government agencies is needed to enable village health volunteers to solve problems of DHF in the community more efficiently and effectively.