Socio economic determinants of attitude towards hepatitis B and C: A case study of district Faisalabad,Punjab-Pakistan

Hepatitis is a potentially life threatening infectious disease of liver causing serious health problems all around the world like higher mortality and longer morbidity costs to patients. patients suffering from it face discriminatory behavior not only from health care workers but also from fellow community members. discriminatory behavior is rooted in the knowledge about this disease and is linked to socioeconomic status of people. lack of knowledge apparently leads people in pakistan to discriminatory attitude which can affect willingness of patients to get treatment. this study aims to study awareness and attitude of healthy people towards hepatitis disease and its patients. this study may help to cope with problems related to this disease at community level. primary data was collected from total 350 respondents through convenient sampling from district faisalabad-pakistan. tobit model was applied to calculate the determinants of people's attitude towards hepatitis b and c. people having high knowledge about hepatitis disease also have positive attitude for hepatitis patients and this result is statically significant. older people have negative attitude towards hepatitis disease. education and income have a positive role to play in the positive attitude towards the patient but income has a very small s coefficient. rural residents expressed negative relationship with positive attitude on an average as compared to urban residents. government,ngos,media can help academicians and health professionals to contribute in launching the awareness campaign to increase the knowledge about this disease to transform shift the attitude of people from negative to positive.