Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice on Malaria Prevention Among Students of Hamelmalo Agricultural College
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Minassie Mengisteab Araia, Amanuel Hadgu Mebrahtu, Ghenet Weldegerghish
2020
unpublished
Background: Malaria is one of the most severe public health problems worldwide with 300 to 500 million cases and about one million deaths reported annually. In Eritrea, malaria is one of the major public health problems, particularly in Gash Barka zone which bears more than 60% of the burden. Objective: To assess the knowledge, attitude, practice and misconceptions as well as association among knowledge of most vulnerable population and practice of the respondents on utilization of ITN with
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... r demographic characteristics. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess KAP of Hamelmalo Agriculture College students in November 2016. Data was analyzed by SPSS version 20 and Stata version 13. Results: (99.3%) of respondents were aware of the existence of malaria as a disease. With regard to the malaria symptoms, fever was the most frequently reported by participant accounts 99.7%. 70.1% of respondents said they went to health facility if they get sick. Majority (85.1%) of the respondents owned ITN but only 69.2% slept last night in ITN. 228 (77.55%) perceive malaria as serious diseases only if it remains untreated however, 13 (4.42%) as an ordinary disease. Some misconceptions were found on the assessment of the students on factors associated with malaria infection and health seeking behavior. The predictors of ITN utilization was found to be age 20 (OR18.49, (CI 1.227-278.87) (P=0.035) and being resident of Zoba Debub (OR 0.094, (CI, 0.014-0.607)) (0.013) or Zoba Gash Barka (OR 0.027(CI, 0.02-0.258) (P=0.002). The association between age of respondent and level of knowledge was found to be statistically significant with OR ranging from 3.9 up to 37.5 for the differ age groups.Conclusion: The student of Hamelmalo Agricultural College has a fair knowledge, which is above 60% of the mean score and 50% on attitude and practice which is hard to accept, because we were proposing to get more than 50%. So there are still areas that need to be addressed, since the students are likely to influence the behavior of their parents addressing the existing misconception is important.
doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-110519/v1
fatcat:c6flo7v6cnbnpmm6cgppb4v6gi