Knowledge and attitude about sexually transmitted infections among paramedical 1st year students in a tertiary care teaching institute in Pondicherry

Background: Sexually transmitted infections (STI’s) are transmitted through sexual intercourse. Young individuals of 16-24 yr age group are more prone to STIs because they lack adequate knowledge about STIs and tend to have wrong perceptions towards sex. Thus it becomes important to assess the knowledge level about STIs among this age group. The main objective of this study was designed to evaluate the knowledge, awareness, perception and attitude about STIs among paramedical 1st year students in a tertiary care institute. Methods: The study was a descriptive cross sectional study. Detailed questionnaire eliciting information about knowledge, awareness, perception and attitude of the respondents towards STIs was administered to 227 paramedical 1st year students. This self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Results: 227 paramedical students participated in this study. Among them 103 (45%) were males and 124 (55%) females. Majority of the students (68%) got the source of information of STIs from education in school and college, 57% from internet and 49% from print media. 95% of the respondents knew about at least one STI. The two most commonly mentioned STIs were HIV (60%) and Syphilis (41%). 7% did not have any knowledge about STI. 68% mentioned sex with multiple partners as a mode of transmission and 46% knew unprotected sex. 17.6%-21.6% of them had misconception about mode of transmission. 49.8% mentioned weakness, 47.6% loss of weight as the symptoms of STIs where as 25.6% did not know anything about symptoms at all. Majority of respondents (60%) did not know about the complications of STDs. Also attitude towards sexual health and prevention of STIs was variable. Conclusions: Findings of our study showed that it is important to orient the paramedical students about sexual health and positive attitude towards STIs. This will help in prevention and control of STIs.