Abstract

BACKGROUND: Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) kills more than 4.9 million adults yearly, and it is one of the major threats to global public health for low- and middle-income countries that mostly affects the adult population. Kiribati is currently facing the increasing prevalence of morbidity and mortality from T2DM.

OBJECTIVE: To find out the level of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) towards T2DM among healthy adults in South Tarawa, Kiribati.

METHODS: This cross sectional study was conducted on South Tarawa, Kiribati at three randomly selected public health clinics from September 25 to November 20, 2017. Non-diabetic patients from both sexes who aged 18 years and above were selected by a simple random sampling technique to participate in this study. A pretested structured questionnaire was used to collect data and SPSS (version 22) was used for data analysis. Descriptive statistics was used to study the characteristics of the population and level of KAP.

RESULTS: 405 person participated in this study. Majority of the participants were in the age range of 18-24 years (30.4%), were females (66.2%) and had ever married (68.6%). The study revealed that the mean knowledge score was 20.47 (±3.49) which shows that participants had moderate level of knowledge towards T2DM. The mean score for attitude score was 61.06 (±5.48) which shows that participants had high level of attitude towards T2DM. The mean practice score was 4.57 (±2.01) which shows that participants had a low level of practice towards T2DM.

CONCLUSION: A great emphasis on health education regarding symptoms, risk factors modification and prevention is T2DM are necessary.

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