Knowledge, attitude and practice towards tuberculosis among healthcare and non-healthcare students at a public university in Saudi Arabia

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is a bacterial infection. It mostly affects the lungs (pulmonary TB), but it can also affect other organs. This cross-sectional study evaluated knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) related to TB among King Khalid University (KKU) students between October and November 2023. Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate current TB knowledge, attitudes, and practices of students at King Khalid University in Abha, Saudi Arabia. Methods: A self-administered, cross-sectional, descriptive, web-based questionnaire was conducted from October to December 2023 among the students of King Khalid University. We used a 29-item questionnaire with five sections. Section 1 contained five questions about sociodemographic factors, there were 13 knowledge questions in Section 2, Section 3 contained 7 attitude questions, Section 4 contained 3 practice questions, and Section 5 contained 1 source of information question. A chi-squared test was used to assess differences in participants' knowledge, attitude, and practices in relation to their demographic variables (p < 0.05). Results: A total of 518 students completed the questionnaire. 53.66% were healthcare students and 46.33% non-healthcare students. The mean scores for healthcare and non-healthcare students, respectively, were as follows: knowledge 11.80 +/- 4.81, 7.35 +/- 4.96; attitude 6.94 +/- 1.33, 5.05 +/- 2.09; and practice 2.26 +/- 0.85, 1.14 +/- 0.87. The results of this study showed good knowledge (24.82 and 5.83% for healthcare and non-healthcare students, respectively) good attitude (67.62 and 46.25%) and good practice (45.32 and 9.58%). A total of 24.32% healthcare students and 28.18% non-healthcare students reported that most effective sources for obtaining information about TB were social networks, the internet and the radio. Conclusion: The current study concludes that the knowledge, attitude, and practice about TB among healthcare faculty students is better than their non-healthcare counterparts. However, there are still areas of poor knowledge, attitude and practice toward some aspects of TB among the two categories, which shows the necessity of educational intervention that aims at improving student understanding about the disease and its impact on public health.