Epilepsy awareness among school teachers in Thailand

Propose: Epilepsy is one of the most common neurologic disorders of childho od. However, in Thailand, as well as in most of other developing countries, little attention has been paid to improve the public knowledge regarding e pilepsy. Currently public attitude toward epilepsy is rather negative, full of prejudices and bias. Children with epilepsy in Thailand still find them selves confronted with social barriers that prevent them from academic achi evements, in addition to the limitation that the disease itself has already placed on them. To delineate the magnitude and scope of this problem, we p erformed a small pilot study to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practic e of epilepsy in the schoolteachers in Thailand whose major impact on the c hildren is manifested by attitudes and learning. Methods: The study was conducted by sending simple self-administered questi onnaires to 360 schools all over Thailand. The questionnaires contained 14 questions relating to epilepsy awareness, attitudes, and first-aid manageme nt of seizures. Results: We found that 38% of respondents had not heard of or read about ep ilepsy, and 46.6% believed that epilepsy is a chronic incurable disease. Fi fteen percent of the respondents preferred to place all children with epile psy in a special classroom. Furthermore, half of the respondents who had ex perience with first-aid management of seizures used improper and potentiall y harmful measures. Conclusions: Besides the proper management of epilepsy, a general public ed ucation campaign for epilepsy and the need to address and correct the exist ing biases are necessary to improve the quality of life of children with ep ilepsy in Thailand.