Socio-demographic Patterns, Perceptions, Prevalence and Communicability of Scabies in Islamabad, Pakistan

Abstract

Even though there is a high prevalence of scabies in various impoverished communities, no profound research work has been done so far on its contagiousness, communicability, and risk assessments in Islamabad, Pakistan. Scabies has been enlisted by the World Health Organization as the most neglected contagious tropical disease and its high prevalence in various underprivileged, impoverished and resource-poor communities, no profound research work has been done so far on its contagiousness, communicability, and risk assessments in Islamabad, Pakistan. The present study was aimed to explore the community perceptions, socio-demographic features, healthcare-seeking attitudes, and prevention practices that were contributing to the prevalence and communicability of scabies in a resource-deficient urban community of Islamabad, Pakistan. Data was collected through an orally-administered questionnaire through random sampling. The community responses were entered and analyzed in statistical package SPSS software version 21. The results have shown a high prevalence of scabies (57%) in the target slum community of Islamabad, Pakistan. More than half of the population were found living in congested household settings (61%), deficient in formal /informal education (57%), and were hardly making both ends to meet (59%) with their nominal monthly income (< 6000 Pakistani rupees). It is hence concluded that a low level of community awareness and perception coupled with the socio-demographic features were found to be associated with the high prevalence and communicability of scabies.