J Vect Borne Dis 42, September 2005, pp 122–127 Awareness about dengue syndrome and related preventive practices amongst residents of an urban resettlement colony of south Delhi Anita Acharya, K. Goswami, S. Srinath & A. Goswami Centre for Community Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India Key words Community awareness – dengue – mosquito control – urban Dengue is the most common disease among all the ar- thropod-borne viral diseases. Due to occurrence of remarkable changes in the epidemiology of dengue, currently dengue ranks as the most important mos- quito-borne viral disease in the world. In the past 50 years, its incidence has increased 30-fold with signifi- cant outbreaks occurring in five of the six World Health Organization (WHO) regions. At present, den- gue is endemic in 112 countries in the world 1,2 . Around 2.5 to 3 billion people, living mainly in urban areas of tropical and subtropical regions are estimated to be at risk of acquiring dengue viral infections 2 . Esti- mates suggest that annually 100 million cases of den- gue fever and half a million cases of dengue haemor- rhagic fever (DHF) occur in the world with a case fa- tality of 0.5–3.5% in Asian countries 3 . Of those with DHF, 90% are children < 15 years of age 2 . In 1998 pandemic, 1.2 million cases of DHF occurred in 56 countries with 3 to 4% fatality. Major epidemics have been reported from Delhi, capital of India in the years 1967, 1970, 1982, 1996 and 2003 4–8 . In the year 1996, a total of 8,900 cases were reported and the case fatality rate was 4.2% and in 2003, a total of 2882 cases and 35 deaths of dengue were reported from Delhi 8 . Considering the magnitude of the prob- lem the present study was undertaken to assess the knowledge of the community regarding dengue and the preventive practices undertaken by them. A cross-sectional community-based study was under- taken in Dr. Ambedkar Nagar, a resettlement colony of south Delhi, Block No. 3 from June–July 2004. All the households with presence of an individual aged between 15 and 60 years at the time of the visit and residing in the area for at least six months were in- cluded in the study. If the house was found to be locked on two consecutive visits and if the subjects refused to participate in the study, they were ex- cluded. Pre-tested semi-structured interview schedule was prepared in English and was translated to Hindi, the most widely spoken language of the community. The interview schedule consisted of 17 questions divided in four sections: (i) demographic profile; (ii) knowl- edge regarding dengue; (iii) practices related to den- gue/mosquito control; and (iv) sources of information regarding dengue. The interview schedule was pre-tested in another block not included in the study. It was standardised Short Note