Assessment of the Community Awareness on Transmission and Control Practices towards Gastrointestinal Parasites in Fruits and Vegetables in Zanzibar

Sadiki S. Kakomo^1, , Jahashi S. Nzalawahe¹ and Eliakunda M. Mafie¹

¹College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Department of Microbiology, Parasitology and Biotechnology, Sokoine University of Agriculture, P.O.Box 3019, Morogoro, Tanzania

Cite this paper

Sadiki S. Kakomo, Jahashi S. Nzalawahe and Eliakunda M. Mafie. Assessment of the Community Awareness on Transmission and Control Practices towards Gastrointestinal Parasites in Fruits and Vegetables in Zanzibar. American Journal of Public Health Research. 2022; 10(3):90-97. doi: 10.12691/AJPHR-10-3-1

Abstract

Community can be at risk of being infected with gastrointestinal parasites due to lack of awareness. The semi-structured questionnaires were administered randomly to 400 respondents (vendors and consumers of fruits and vegetables) at the five purposively selected public markets in Zanzibar. The markets were Mwanakwerekwe, Mombasa, Darajani, Chakechake and Wete. The data that were collected included demographic characteristics of the study respondents and their awareness on the knowledge of aetiology, clinical signs, transmission and control practices with regard to gastrointestinal parasites contamination on fruits and vegetables marketed in Zanzibar. The results showed that, 75.5% of the respondents were aware on gastrointestinal parasites. The respondents were found to have good knowledge of control practices (85.3%), followed by transmission (80.5%), clinical signs (69.5%) and knowledge of aetiology (56.4%) on gastrointestinal parasites. The findings of this study indicated that community in Zanzibar were aware on transmission and control practices for fruits and vegetables contamination with gastrointestinal parasites.

Keywords

awareness, community, gastrointestinal parasites, fruits and vegetables, Zanzibar.

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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