Information Literacy Levels of the Community Who Have Chronic Renal Disease of Unknown Etiology (CKDu) in the Anuradhapura District.

Abstract

Chronic Kidney Disease is a one of leading health issue in Sri Lanka and the number of people dying with the disease is rising each day. Chronic Kidney Disease, also known as chronic renal failure, chronic renal disease, or chronic kidney failure, is a slow progressive loss of kidney function over a period of several years. Eventually the patient has permanent kidney failure. (Nordqvist, 2016) According to this situation, information and patient awareness are the most important factors. Through a systematic information dissemination process, people can aware of the current and future situation and their safe methods. This research focuses to find the information seeking strategies of CKDu communities and to identify their information literacy skills. Survey was conducted to identify the research problem and data were collected using questionnaires and interviews. Research area was Anuradhapura District and research could identify the information skills and literacy levels in order to their situation. It was identified that 89% of members of the sample had reading and writing skills and 11% of members were not familiar with reading and writing. It also showed the preferences on information communication media. According to that, awareness and literacy programs need to be implemented mainly by libraries as community information centers. Suggestions were made to implement systematic communication procedure and social awareness programs.