Prevalence of and factors associated with alcohol consumption in Temeke in August/September, 2002.

Objective: To determine the prevalence of alcohol consumption in Temeke district by social demographic characteristics.

Methodology: Population-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Temeke district involving persons above 15 years of age. We selected Keko ward for the study and simple random sampling procedure was used to select clusters of ten-cell leaders. All households in the selected ten-cell leaders were included in the study sample. The study was cleared by the Ethical Clearance Committee of the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Dar es Salaam. Chi-squared (chi2) test for contingency tables was used to assess statistical significance and the results were considered significant if p-value was less than 0.5.

Results: A total of 246 persons participated in the survey and of these 22% (54) were alcohol drinkers. The age group 25-35 years showed a high prevalence with a male preponderance. There was no difference in the drinking pattern between single and married subjects with 20.1% and 22% respectively. On education basis, 22.1% of primary school leavers drank alcohol. Teachers and businessmen drank alcohol more than other occupational groups with 33.3% and 25.6% respectively. Bad health effect was the most perceived alcohol related problem occurring in 65.4% of all the respondents.

Conclusion: It was concluded that alcohol consumption was low in Temeke as compared to other regions and was seen more in males than females and bad health effect was the most perceived problem resulting from alcohol consumption. We recommend that similar studies should be done in other districts of Dar-es-Salaam to validate our findings.