Introduction Dengue/Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF) is an emergent disease in India. It is endemic in some parts of country and contributes annual outbreaks of dengue/DHF.

Methods A cross sectional study was conducted in Aligarh, India, in peri urban area from October to November 2010 to asses knowledge, attitude and preventive practices on dengue. Randomly 120 adults were recruited by using Cochran's formula. Standardised oral questionnaire was used to collect information on demographic and dengue related KAP after taking informed consent. Knowledge and practices were graded good, fair and poor using Bloom's cut-off point and attitude was classified as positive, neutral and negative using Likert's scale. Reliability of questionnaire was analysed by using Cronbach's α Coefficient. The data collected was analysed by software SPSS version 17.0.

Results 42% respondents had low knowledge, 44.2% had positive attitude and 10.2% respondents followed good practices. Significant positive correlation was found between knowledge and practice (p<0.05), but no significance was found between attitude with knowledge or practice.

Conclusion The results suggested that good attitude does not translates into good practices, therefore health promotion activities should be strengthened for improving knowledge, ensuring people are receptive to the messages and making it easier for them to adopt desired change of behaviour.