| Abstract |
The diseases like Tuberculosis, Hepatitis and HIV/AIDS remained a major health concern especially in developing countries. The awareness and knowledge about such diseases is of prime importance. The analysis of socio-economic factors associated with tendency of awareness and knowledge about the said diseases is fundamental. However, in Pakistan, very few studies have considered such investigations using nationally representative data. In addition, a careful review of the literature suggest that no study have analyzed the trends in awareness and knowledge about said diseases with respect to time using nationally representative datasets. Further, the existing literature regarding these studies has utilized the classical methods for the analysis. We have considered a detailed study for analyzing the trends in awareness and knowledge about the said diseases in the general population of Pakistan from 2006 to 2018 using nationally representative data collected through Pakistan Demographic and Health surveys. In addition, we have considered the Bayesian methods for the analysis and performance of the proposed Bayes methods have been compared with the frequently used classical methods. The results indicated that the proposed Bayesian logistic regression models performed better as compared to classical logistic regression models. This is due to fact that widths of 95% CIs were smaller for Bayesian logistic regression, as compared to classical logistic regression models. The findings of the study suggest that there are severe disparities (with respect to different socio-economic groups) in knowledge and awareness of respondents for TB, hepatitis and AIDs. The levels of knowledge and awareness about the said diseases are drastically low for respondents living in rural areas, having lower levels of education and wealth. These disparities seem to persist, as the corresponding odds have not changes much during the period 2006 to 2018. The policy maker should plan and implement the strategies to reduce the observed disparities for different sectors of society. |
