International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health | 2016 | Vol 5 | Issue 09 1803 Access this article online Website: http://www.ijmsph.com Quick Response Code: DOI: 10.5455/ijmsph.2016.25122015325 Research Article Study on awareness about vector borne diseases and education about preventive measures in rural feld practice areas of Kurnool medical college, Kurnool Arepalli Sreedevi, Rutesh Vardhan Burru, Guthi Visweswara Rao, Padmasri Yalamanchili, Cynthia Subhaprada, Vijaya Kumari, Siva Kala, Aruna MS Department of Community Medicine, Kurnool Medical College, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, India. Correspondence to: Guthi Visweswara Rao, E-mail: vissumbbs@gmail.com Received December 25, 2015. Accepted January 04, 2016 Background: Vector borne diseases (VBDs) account for 17% of the estimated global burden of all infectious diseases. The most deadly VBD, malaria caused an estimated 627,000 deaths in 2012. The world’s fastest growing VBD is dengue, with a 30-fold increase in disease incidence over last 50 years. Objective: To create awareness about common VBDs in the villages through village volunteers and educate them about the measures to prevent the occurrence of the disease by community participation and behavioral change communication and to assess the impact of educational intervention. Materials and Methods: This study was community-based longitudinal study conducted in fve villages in the rural feld practice area of Kurnool Medical College, Kurnool. Sample of 50 houses examined in each village before intervention and reexamined after conducting fve educational intervention sessions with 1 week gap between each session for a total period of 5 weeks to assess the impact. Result: A total of 250 villagers and public health workers from fve villages participated in both pre-educational and post-educational intervention. There was signifcant improvement in the habits such as avoiding sleeping, cleaning water containers weekly, and covering of water storage tanks with lids. Conclusion: It is concluded that with the intensifed efforts toward creating a public awareness about VBDs, the meas- ures taken to control vectors other than personal protection measures suggested that health education interventions are effective and remain a valuable tool in community-based vector prevention and control interventions. KEY WORDS: Vector borne diseases, rural areas, awareness, preventive measures Abstract International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health Online 2016. © 2016 Guthi Visweswara Rao. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. in 2012. In recent years they have emerged as a major public health problem in India, particularly dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis and malaria now occur in epidemic proportions almost on an annual basis causing considerable morbidity and mortality. [1] The world’s fastest growing VBD is dengue, with a 30-fold increase in disease incidence over last 50 years. Every year there are more than 1 billion cases and over 1 million deaths from VBDs. In India, 27% population live in malaria high transmission area. The diseases are commonly in tropical and subtropical regions and places where access to safe drinking water and sanitation system is problematic. They are on the rise because of failure of these existing meth- ods of control of vector and VBDs and the climate change. A steep rise of VBDs is due to several factors such as selection Introduction Vector borne diseases (VBDs) account for 17% of the estimated global burden of all infectious diseases. Malaria, the most deadly VBD, caused an estimated 627,000 deaths