People awareness about diabetes disease and its complications among aged 18 years and older in Bushehr port inhabitants (Iran)

Introduction: One of the most prevalent metabolic disease is diabetes and it can lead to enormous medical as well as socio-economic consequences. The Iranian diabetes population is estimated to be around 1.5million. Studies show that approximately half of the people with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) are undiagnosed and thus unaware that they have the disease. This lack of awareness can lead to presentation with complications and its consequences. The aim of this survey was to determine the level of population awareness in Bushehr port, based on the available education programs. Material and methods: The cross-sectional study was assessed upon 719 subjects aged over 18 years old, without diabetes and inhabitant in Bushehr port in 2005. Multistage random simple sampling was used in this study. A questionnaire was prepared with validity checked by researchers in Yazd Diabetes Research Center and reliability alpha-cronbach = 75%. The questionnaire was included 39 questions: demographics indices, fundamentals about diabetes, its presenting signs and symptoms, the early and late complications, means of management as well as looked into the source of the information. The data was analyzed with independent t-test, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, ANOVA and multiple-regression models by SPSS package ver. 10.05. Results: In this study, 719 subjects (417 male and 302 female) that mean age was 40.13 11.48 years (40.8 12.93 for male and 39.19 9.03 for female) were assessed. The male awareness rate was more than of female (P = 0.001). There was indirect relation between subjects’ awareness and their age (r = 0.203, P = 0.001). There was direct relation between awareness and the level of education of subjects (P = 0.01, r = 0.07). The mean of awareness scores of subjects was not