Assessment of the Prevalence of Malaria in Karamara Hospital and Knowledge of the Study Population Toward Malaria and its Control in Jigjiga town, Somali Regional State.
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Date
2019-08-08
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Malaria is a severe community health problem in Ethiopia, in which above 68% of the population is at risk for infection and an average of 2.5 million cases are recorded every year. The assessment of the situation of malaria disease in the study community and its knowledge, attitude and practice is necessary in order to institute appropriate malaria prevention and control activities. The objective of the study was to assess the proportion of malaria and the knowledge of study population toward malaria and its control in Jigjiga town, Somali Regional State. The study was conducted to assess the prevalence of malaria at Jigjiga General Hospital based on one year retrospective data from January, 2018 to December, 2018 and to determine the community knowledge, practice and attitude about malaria by distributing questioners. The sample size was determined using the formula n = Z2 × P (1-P)/d. A total of 472 participants were involved in the study. Data was collected by questioner interview technique. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 20.0 statistical package. In Karamara General Hospital, from January, 2018 to December, 2018 a total of 6,393 malaria suspected patients were diagnosed microscopically, of which 230(3.6 %) of patients were malaria positive. The prevalence of Plasmodium falciparum was 74.9% and P. vivax was 19.1%. From the total of 472 respondents who were interviewed in Jigjiga town, 97.7% had ever heard of malaria, 74.4% knew that malaria could be transmitted from person to person, 56.1% believed that malaria was a preventable disease, 26% mentioned mosquito bites transmits disease. In addition, 94.7% respondents were heard about mosquito net and 57.4% bought from market, 11.7% obtained freely given from NGO’s and 30.9% from government freely. The prevalence of malaria was 3.6% and it was less to compared when the total Ethiopian prevalence and the knowledge of study community is well about malaria. Further studies should be conducted to determine the status of malaria.
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Knowledge, Malaria, Mosquito, Plasmodium, Prevalence, Somali Regional State