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Assessment of physicians' knowledge to combat obesity in Bangladesh
Sonchita Rani Mudi1, Ponkaj Kanti Datta2, Nondita Mudi3
1Department of Biochemistry, Kumudini Women's Medical College, Mirzapur, Tangail, Bangladesh.
Objective:
Physicians need to play a proactive role to combat obesity and its associated comorbidities. The present survey was conducted to assess the awareness, knowledge, practice and attitude of the physicians in Bangladesh in the prevention and management of obesity.
Methods:
Three hundred physicians were randomly selected from a medical university, a government medical college and a private medical college in Bangladesh to be included in this survey. All of them voluntarily participated in the survey upon the assurance of anonymity. All the selected physicians were provided with a questionnaire consisting of nine questions for assessing their awareness, knowledge, practice and attitude regarding obesity.
Results:
Out of 300 participants, about 77% claimed that they know their own BMI and BMI cut-off points for overweight and obesity. But 38% physicians were unable to write the cut-off points correctly. Near about 50% physicians claimed that they know the BMI cut-off points for Asian population. However, only 7% were able to correctly write the BMI cut-off points for Asian population. About 47% physicians agreed that they do not calculate BMI or evaluate other measures of body fatness during clinical practice. However, 99% of the physicians considered that measuring BMI during consultation or clinical practice is important.
Conclusions:
It may be concluded that Bangladeshi physicians' have positive attitude for managing obesity but their practice is grossly inadequate. Most importantly, knowledge and awareness of the physicians about diagnosis of obesity is very poor.