BACKGROUND: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic lifestyle disease without a cure, and
medical emphasis is on management to avoid short and long term diabetes related
problems/complications. It is very important for patients to be knowledgeable on the role of diet,
physical exercise and self-monitoring. The main objective of this study was to determine the
knowledge, attitudes and practices of the diabetes mellitus patients about the benefit of physical
activity.
METHODOLOGY: The was a cross sectional descriptive study that assessed the knowledge,
attitudes and practices amongst diabetes mellitus patients on physical activity at Block 6 clinic in
Gaborone, Botswana. The researcher administered questionnaires with individual patients to
investigate how well they understood their condition, their attitude towards exercise and the
extent to which they have adopted exercise as part of their diabetes control. A total of 140
diabetic patients participated in the study.
RESULTS: The results of the study revealed that participants had good knowledge of
symptoms of diabetes (97.9%), complications that can result when diabetes is not well
controlled (76.4%) and urine analysis test (65%). The results also showed that majority of the
participants had fair knowledge (62.1%) and only (20.0%) had good knowledge; (89.4%) had
positive attitude, and only 10.6% had negative attitude towards physical exercise. The results
show that 59.6% had low level of physical activity, 31.3% did not exercise, whilst only 9.1%
reported that they exercised adequately.
CONCLUSION
The study reveals a variation between diabetes related health knowledge, attitude, and practice
in among those who are affected by diabetes. The knowledge and practice levels were relatively
low. Nevertheless majority of the study participants had positive attitude towards Physical
Activity.