A Survey of International Inbound Passengers onTheir Knowledge of the Health Statement

Lai CL

2001 Vol.17 NO.5

Correspondence Author：

Abstract：

The present survey used the cross-sectional method to study the extent of knowledge of international inbound passengers concerning the Health Statement. In February 2000 at the Hsiaokang International Airport in Kaohsiung, inbound domestic passengers arriving from Hong Kong, Macao, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan were randomly selected for study. A structured questionnaire was used to personally interview 611 of these passengers. The results were processed and analyzed with SPSS for Windows 8.05 soft. Of those interviewed, 300 (49.1%) were males; and 284 (46.0%) were females. 48% (293/611) of them had their travel arrangements made by travel agents; and 41.1% (251/611) did not. 46.0% (281/611) knew that there was a quarantine office at the airport, though only 0.3% (2/611) knew that it was named the Center for Disease Control of the Department of Health. 53% (324/611) knew how to correctly fill in the Health Statement. 0.3% (2/611) had symptoms of diarrhea. No statistically significant difference by sex (p>0.05) was noted in passengers’ ability to correctly answer the Health Statement. Of those passengers who had their travel arrangements made by travel agents, 49.5% (139/281) knew how to correctly fill in the Health Statement; whereas 60.1% (149/248) of passengers who did not have their travel arranged for them knew how to do so. 74.5% (204/274) of passengers who knew there was a quarantine office at the airport knew how to fill in the Health Statement. This was higher than the 37.3% (120/322) of passengers who did not know of the existence of a quarantine office at the airport though they did know how to fill in the Health Statement. Both differences were statistically significant (p<0.05).