An intervention study to improve safe behaviour of pesticide handling among tobacco planters in Bachok, Kelantan

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Date
2002
Authors
Selamat, Mohamad Ikhsan
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Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
In Malaysia, 6.7% of agricultural workers were annually poisoned accidentally by pesticides. Few surveys have been done to understand the causes of pesticide poisoning among agricultural workers. This community intervention study was done between July 2000 and June 2001 to evaluate an education package aimed at improving safe behaviour of pesticide handling in tobacco planters in Bachok, Kelantan. A sample of 85 (intervention group) and 71 (control group) tobacco planters were randomly recruited from Tawang and Telong (response rate of 95.2% and 98.6% respectively). A structured and reliable interview-guided questionnaire was administered to both groups of planters before and after intervention to assess their knowledge, attitude and practice on safe behaviour of pesticide handling. The education package comprises of a seminar on safe methods of pesticide handling using flip charts, posters, pamphlets, photographs and display of personal protective equipment. Repeated measure ANOVA model was applied to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention. There were significant differences noted in the pre-intervention knowledge and attitude between intervention and control group where the mean score of knowledge were 15.68 ± 4.22 & 17.46 ±: 2.81 (p = 0.002) and the mean score of attitude were 20.06 ± 4.32 & 22.66 ± 1.63 (p = 0.00 l) respectively. The estimated marginal means of scores in the intervention group for pre- and post-intervention were 15.60 & 18.27 for knowledge, 19.98 & 23.26 for attitude and 18.06 & 19.53 for practice respectively after controlling for duration of occupation. The improvement of the scores in the intervention group was significantly higher than those in controls (p < 0.001 ). The result suggests that the education package is appropriate in improving the KAP and safe behaviour of pesticide handling among tobacco planters in Bachok, Kelantan.
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Keywords
Pesticides
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