Sociodemographic determinants of management behaviour of diabetic patients. Part II. Diabetics' knowledge of the disease and their management behaviour.

We aimed to: describe the level of knowledge of diabetic patients about the disease, show the relationship between demographic variables (age, sex and education) and level of knowledge and reveal the relationship between knowledge and management-related behaviour of diabetics. We found that a majority of diabetic patients (90.0%) had poor knowledge about the disease, 83.7% had poor knowledge about the complications associated with diabetes and 96.3% had poor awareness of how to control the disease. The poor level of knowledge that diabetics have about their disease suggests that health care providers need to be trained in the areas of information, education and communication.