Vol. 8, Issue 3, Part B (2025)

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a serious chronic disease all over the world including Iraq. If uncontrolled or not treated, major complications can affect the whole body systems. Therefore it is important that everyone should be aware about the disease, its risk factors, signs and symptoms, the complications in addition to its management and self-care.
Objectives: To assess the knowledge of adults in Basra about the signs, symptoms, risk factors and complications of Diabetes Mellitus
Methodology: A descriptive cross sectional that included 388 in-patients attending Basra teaching hospitals during October 2024.
Results: 72.16% of the study population gave a history of having previous education about Diabetes Mellitus. While 27.84% of them had no any kind of education or awareness about the disease. Among those with previous history of health education about the disease, media was the main source of education (36.07%) followed by Health care workers (30%).
On asking the study respondents about the information they have about the signs and symptoms of Diabetes mellitus, “Thirst” and “Change in weight” were the highest. While in regards to the risk factors, “Genetics and Family History” was the most common factor they know about (18.44%). And in relation to the respondents’ knowledge about complications of Diabetes, the highest they knew about was “Diabetic nephropathy” and Stroke.
Conclusions and Recommendations: In spite of having good percentage of people whom already had a previous history of receiving health education on Diabetes Mellitus, still there’s a proportion of the population that did not receive any education or awareness about the disease. In general there’s deficiency in the knowledge about the disease signs and symptoms, risk factors and its complications. Accordingly, and based on the study results, strengthening of the health educational and awareness programs with a special focus on those with a positive family history of the disease or those having its risk factors.