Study of awareness of tick-borne diseases among children and young people in the Czech Republic

Abstract

In the 2000 and 2001 years, there was performed a study which has given some insight on the knowledge of youths about ticks and tick-borne diseases. Two thousand seven hundred and sixty-three respondents from 6 to 26 years of age took part in this investigation. More than 98% of respondents knew about the existence of ticks. Almost 93% of children and 97% of adolescents reported that ticks feed on blood. Although the majority of respondents aged 10 to 26 years is convinced that ticks live on vegetation, 23% of them supposed that ticks jump on humans from trees. As many as 93.5% of youths knew that Lyme disease is transmitted by ticks. The main sources of information about Lyme disease for students and pupils older than 10 years of age are television and radio (40.9%) and the press (37.5%). The frequency of contact of young people with ticks is high--90.4% of children younger than 12 years, and 93.7% of youths from 10 to 26 years of age had at least once an attached tick. 56.1% of youths older than 10 years use oil to remove an attached tick. Almost 23.7% remove ticks with bare hands. People used those methods of tick removal although even children younger than 12 years of age knew that it was an incorrect habit. After removing, a tick is most frequently burned.