Improving malaria knowledge and practices in rural Myanmar through a village health worker intervention: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Since 2008 the Sun Primary Health (SPH) franchise programme has networked and branded community health workers in rural Myanmar to provide high quality malaria information and treatment. The purpose of this paper is to compare the malaria knowledge level and health practices of individuals in SPH intervention areas to individuals without SPH intervention METHODS: This study uses data from a cross-sectional household survey of 1,040 individuals living in eight rural townships to compare the knowledge level of individuals in SPH intervention areas to individuals without SPH intervention. RESULTS: This study found that the presence of a SPH provider in the community is associated with increased malaria knowledge and higher likelihood of going to trained providers for fevers. Furthermore, the study found a dose–response, where the longer the duration of the programme in a community, the greater the community knowledge level. CONCLUSION: The study suggests that community health workers might have significant impact on malaria-related mortality and morbidity in rural Myanmar.