A Study on Knowledge, Perception and Attitude Towards Premarital Carrier Screening (PMCS) Among Students Attending Universities

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to explore the knowledge, perception and attitude of university students of Bangladesh, regarding the concept of premarital carrier screening (PMCS). The study was conducted at different universities inside Dhaka City and near Dhaka City through a self-administered questionnaire which was distributed to 513 university going students aged 15 – 30 years. We found that, the majority of the participants (66.47%) had never heard about PMCS. After giving a brief knowledge about PMCS, mostly there was positive attitude toward the program. Almost 90.05% believed that PMCS was necessary and about 61.99% supported the view of making PMCS compulsory. But approximately one fifth (18.52%) of the participants reported that they were totally unwilling to conduct PMCS mostly because of lack of knowledge (50.51%). Overall, despite the relatively low level of knowledge about PMCS, around half of the participants (47.17%) were still willing to conduct premarital carrier screening. Such attitude calls for immediate need for community-based campaigns, Government and non-Government programs to encourage the public to educate people regarding the concept of premarital carrier screening and health issues and to encourage them to do premarital carrier screening tests.