Effectiveness of environmental-based educative programme in injury prevention, disaster preparedness and burn management

Background Preparedness is a necessity for proper handling of emergencies and disasters. Injury prevention, particularly Burns, and first aid educative programmes are important pillars of the preparedness. Programme Objectives Sensitise and mobilise citizens of Suez Canal and Sinai region to injury prevention and first aid as well as enhancing their knowledge and attitude in these domains. Candidates Audience was classified according to their level of knowledge to Health Professional group; students groups; high risk group and lay people group. For course efficacy evaluation, pre and post tests were used immediately before and after the sessions. Method Injury and fire preventive educative programmes were tailored to adapt the environmental discrepancies of audiences, including the social and education levels of audience, common aetiologies as well as applicability of preventive measures according to local resources and logistics. Power point presentations were the main educative tool. Some training was included when appropriate. Acquisition of proper knowledge and attitudes was evaluated through differences in wrong answers in the pre and post tests. Results Results of this study showed significant acquisition of proper attitude and knowledge of injury prevention, evacuation principles and first aid in all educated groups (8040 candidates). The highest acquisition was among students (14.1%) and the least was in the lay people (8.8%). Conclusions Comprehensive simple educative programmes, considering all the environmental factors, particularly the social and educative factors, are ideal for rapid reform and community mobilisation. To achieve maximal effectiveness, the educative team should move to propagate the knowledge and attitude.