Abstract
Malaria has been the leading cause of mortality for many years in underdeveloped countries like Ethiopia. Community Knowledge of cause and transmission of malaria and mosquito feeding behavior is key to design appropriate health communication strategies for malaria prevention and control. The present study aimed to assess knowledge and awareness on malaria and its association with mosquitoes in Dembele kebele, southeastern, Ethiopia. A community cross sectional study was carried out in Dembele kebele from January to February, 2017. A total of 159 randomly selected individuals were interviewed to assess their KAP about malaria. Data were collected by an interview based structured questionnaire after pre-tested. The collected data were entered in to SPSS for data coding and analysis. Binary logistic regressions analysis was applied and statistical significance test was declared at P-value <0.05 and OR with 95% CI. All respondents had ever heard of malaria and more than 86% of them believed that malaria was one of the most health problem diseases of the community. Most of the respondents (70.4%) were reported mosquito bite as the cause of malaria. The majority (79.2%) and (74.2%) of respondents had good levels of knowledge on transmission and prevention of malaria respectively. Binary logistic regression analysis showed that, knowledge on mode of malaria transmission was positively associated with sex (male) (OR=3.3; CI, 1.27-7.22), age (OR=5.03; CI, 1.03-24.46) and education level (OR=3.30; 95% CI, 1.04-10.50). Among socio-demographic variables, only education level (OR=3.8; CI, 1.51-9.65) was significance factor to knowledge on malaria prevention. The study aimed to assess knowledge and awareness regarding the cause, transmission and preventive measures of malaria; it was found to be high. Use of mosquito net as protective measure against mosquito bites was high in the study area. However, distance of respondent house is near to the mosquito breeding site. Therefore, environmental management and use of other additional preventive methods is very important to reduce prevalence of malaria in study area. Sex, age and education level were strong predictors of knowledge on malaria.
Highlights
Malaria is one of the major public health challenges undermining development in underdeveloped countries like Ethiopia
The conducted interview survey results showed that all respondents had ever heard about malaria and among them more than 86% of them believed that malaria was one of the most health problem diseases
Most of the respondents 133(83.7%) believed that malaria can be transmitted through mosquito bite and 126 (79.3%) understood that malaria cannot transmit through flies
Summary
Malaria is one of the major public health challenges undermining development in underdeveloped countries like Ethiopia. It remains a threat to almost 50% of the world's population with 300-500 million annual clinical cases and kills up to 3 million people annually of whom 90% of the cases and deaths occur in Africa [1, 2]. It is an infectious disease and a result of protozoan parasite from the genus plasmodium which is transmitted by female anopheles mosquito in turn infects people [3, 4, 5]. Among the four plasmodium species known to cause malaria in Ethiopia, the two epidemiologically important species are Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax comprising 60% and 40% respectively [6].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
