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Public health
Research
Knowledge and intake of folic acid among teachers of childbearing age in the State of Qatar: a cross-sectional study
  1. Al Mannai Lolowa1,
  2. Nagah Selim1,2,
  3. Mohammad Alkuwari1,
  4. Mansoura Salem Ismail1,3
  1. 1 Family & Community Medicine, Primary Health Care Corporation, Qatar, Doha, Qatar
  2. 2 Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine Cairo university, Cairo, Egypt
  3. 3 Family Medicine, Faculty of medicine Suez Canal university, Ismailia, Egypt
  1. Correspondence to Dr Mansoura Salem Ismail; msismail{at}phcc.gov.qa

Abstract

Objectives To assess the knowledge and intake of folic acid among teachers of childbearing age and to identify barriers to folic acid intake.

Setting Governmental schools, which included 14 primary models, 29 primary, 14 preparatory and 16 secondary schools. The proportion of teachers in each stratum was then determined, and a stratified random sampling design had been used with proportional allocation.

Study design Cross-sectional study

Participants A total of 406 non-pregnant teachers of childbearing age enrolled in the study. A validated questionnaire in the Arabic language was used.

Results The overall response rate was 98%. About 34.6% reported the optimal period in which they should take folic acid, 28.3% reported the correct intake duration and only 29.5% could name food rich in folic acid. Friends and healthcare providers were the main sources of information for the participants; however, 44% said that they did not receive enough information from their healthcare providers.

Conclusion There is a lack of knowledge and poor intake of folic acid among the participants. In particular, they lacked information about the appropriate time to start folic acid supplementations, the duration of intake and the folic acid-rich food. The most common reason being the limited advice given by their healthcare providers.

Awareness campaigns are recommended to emphasise the role of healthcare providers in counselling women about the proper use of folic acid before pregnancy.

  • folic acid
  • pregnancy
  • neural tube defects
  • childbearing
  • knowledge

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-025005

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors LA-M, NAAS and MGA-K designed the study, wrote the primary proposal, managed the data collection, review the literature, fieldwork data management and revised the manuscript. MFS updated the literature review and the discussion and results interpretation, drafted and revised the manuscript, and finalised and submitted the manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval IRB was obtained from Hamad Medical Corporation.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement No additional data are available.

    • Patient consent for publication Obtained.