Hemoglobinopathy awareness among high school students in Antakya (Antioch), Turkey.

Hemoglobinopathy is a major public health problem in Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, where homozygote babies continue to be born. We wanted to present the knowledge of high school students and their attitudes on hemoglobinopathy in Antakya (center of Hatay).The study was performed on 11th grade students in 17 high schools and 486 students in the center at Antakya. We used a questionnaire and frequency tables and chi-square tests were used. Of the students who took part, 37.7% were previously informed about hemoglobinopathies, while 62.3% were not. There was no significant relationship between the school types and their being previously informed (p > 0.05). There was an index case for 28% of the students, and 25.4% of the students who did not have any diseased person around them were previously informed (p < 0.01). While the range of percentage of correct answers was between 17.5% (about treatment of the diseases) and 73.3% (about the carrier status), these percentages seemed to be higher for those who stated that they were previously informed (22.2% about treatment and 85.8% about the carrier status). As much as 83.7% of the students stated that they wanted to be educated about hemoglobinopathies in the school and 89.1% wanted to know if they were carriers. Our study suggests that there is an urgent need to revise the Hemoglobinopathy Control Programme especially with regard to the enlightenment of the students and public.