Abstract:
Introduction: Gastritis is a common inflammatory disease condition. The most
common cause is Helicobactor phylori infection. It adversely affects the quality of
life as well as end-up with life threatening conditions such as gastric cancer.
Therefore, having good practices on prevention of gastritis is important.
Objective: To assess the practice on prevention of gastritis among undergraduates
of Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, University of Jaffna.
Methodology: This descriptive cross-sectional study was done among 426
undergraduates of Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, University of Jaffna selected
by stratified random sampling method. Data were collected by using the pretested
self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the data
and the associated factors were found by using chi squared test. The ethical
clearance was obtained from the Ethics Review Committee of Faculty of Medicine,
University of Jaffna.
Results: The response rate was 91.07%. Among them two third of the participants
were female (67.5%). Mean age of the participants was 23.8years (SD=0.625). In
the findings 43% of the participants had been diagnosed with gastritis., 46.1% were
having good practice on prevention with the mean of 47.6 (SD= 7.678). Majority
of the participants were following bad practices on prevention like eating uncooked
food (70.9%), skipping more than one meal in a day (63.1%), eating high spicy
foods (67%), eating fast foods (66.8%), high salty intake (71.4%), and high citrus
intake (72.4%). Further, this study revealed that a smaller number of participants
were following the good practices like washing hands before meal (50.8%),
following clean technique on food handling (47.9%), getting meal on proper time
(45.9%), referring about practice on prevention (46.1%), following stress realising
techniques (53.1%), and doing regular physical exercises (41.7%).
Conclusion: This study found that less than half of the participants only had good
practice on practice on prevention of gastritis. The study concludes that the practice
of prevention of gastritis were poor among undergraduates.
