Prevalence of Malaria, Knowledge and Practices Towards Malaria And Insecticide Treated Net Utilization Among Communities In Mygaba Town, Western Tigray, Ethiopia.
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Date
2019-10-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Malaria is one of the major public health problems in many tropical developing countries including Ethiopia. Thus, comprehensive epidemiological information on the transmission and distribution of malaria in different localities is a key factor for the development of appropriate control strategies. The objective of this study was to assess the magnitude of malaria and insecticide treated net utilization among communities in Mygaba Town, Western Tigray, and Northern Ethiopia. A community based cross- sectional study was carried out to determine Knowledge and practice of communities towards malaria and utilization of ITNs during March to April 2019. Random sampling technique was carried out to select representative study participants among the community members. Data was collected using standardized questionnaire, laboratory examination of blood samples and five years‟ retrospective documents from the Health Center of Maygaba were investigated from 2015-2019. SPSS version 20 software package crosstab was used for the frequency distribution of independent variables. The organized data were presented in the form of tables, graphs and percentages. Majority 368 (91.3%) of the study participants were good and above knowledge on malaria infection, transmission and the vector. According to study result, most 316 (78.4%) of the study participants knew that malaria is communicable disease, of which 239 (75.6 %) of respondents known that malaria can be transmitted from infected to a healthy individual by mosquito bites. 332 (82.4 %) and 354 (87.8%) of study participants were aware of where to get the right treatment and also had a good knowledge about ITNs utilization respectively. Among the study participants, 257 (63.8%) of respondents have at least one ITNs and 173 (67.3%) of them were slept under ITNs during night time. The occupation, education and knowledge about methods of treatment of malaria had strong relationships with knowledge of ITNs utilization (P < 0.05). The overall malaria prevalence was 4.7%.
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Keywords
Maygaba, ITNs, Plasmodium Falciparum, Plasmodium Vivax, Malaria, Prevalence