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Knowledge, attitudes and practices of malaria in Colombia

BACKGROUND: Although Colombia has witnessed an important decrease in malaria transmission, the disease remains a public health problem with an estimated ~10 million people currently living in areas with malaria risk and ~61,000 cases reported in 2012. This study aimed to determine and compare the le...

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Autores principales: Forero, David A, Chaparro, Pablo E, Vallejo, Andres F, Benavides, Yoldy, Gutiérrez, Juan B, Arévalo-Herrera, Myriam, Herrera, Sócrates
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4113137/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24885909
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-13-165
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author Forero, David A
Chaparro, Pablo E
Vallejo, Andres F
Benavides, Yoldy
Gutiérrez, Juan B
Arévalo-Herrera, Myriam
Herrera, Sócrates
author_facet Forero, David A
Chaparro, Pablo E
Vallejo, Andres F
Benavides, Yoldy
Gutiérrez, Juan B
Arévalo-Herrera, Myriam
Herrera, Sócrates
author_sort Forero, David A
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Although Colombia has witnessed an important decrease in malaria transmission, the disease remains a public health problem with an estimated ~10 million people currently living in areas with malaria risk and ~61,000 cases reported in 2012. This study aimed to determine and compare the level of knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) about malaria in three endemic communities of Colombia to provide the knowledge framework for development of new intervention strategies for malaria elimination. METHODS: A cross-sectional KAP survey was conducted in the municipalities of Tierralta, Buenaventura and Tumaco, categorized according to high risk (HR) and moderate risk (MR) based on the annual parasite index (API). Surveys were managed using REDCap and analysed using MATLAB and GraphPad Prism. RESULTS: A total of 267 residents, mostly women (74%) were surveyed. Although no differences were observed on the knowledge of classical malaria symptoms between HR and MR regions, significant differences were found in knowledge and attitudes about transmission mechanisms, anti-malarial use and malaria diagnosis. Most responders in both regions (93.5% in MR, and 94.3% in HR areas) indicated use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to protect themselves from malaria, and 75.5% of responders in HR indicated they did nothing to prevent malaria transmission outdoors. Despite a high level of knowledge in the study regions, significant gaps persisted relating to practices. Self-medication and poor adherence to treatment, as well as lack of both indoor and outdoor vector control measures, were significantly associated with higher malaria risk. CONCLUSIONS: Although significant efforts are currently being made by the Ministry of Health to use community education as one of the main components of the control strategy, these generic education programmes may not be applicable to all endemic regions of Colombia given the substantial geographic, ethnic and cultural diversity.
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spelling pubmed-41131372014-08-05 Knowledge, attitudes and practices of malaria in Colombia Forero, David A Chaparro, Pablo E Vallejo, Andres F Benavides, Yoldy Gutiérrez, Juan B Arévalo-Herrera, Myriam Herrera, Sócrates Malar J Research BACKGROUND: Although Colombia has witnessed an important decrease in malaria transmission, the disease remains a public health problem with an estimated ~10 million people currently living in areas with malaria risk and ~61,000 cases reported in 2012. This study aimed to determine and compare the level of knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) about malaria in three endemic communities of Colombia to provide the knowledge framework for development of new intervention strategies for malaria elimination. METHODS: A cross-sectional KAP survey was conducted in the municipalities of Tierralta, Buenaventura and Tumaco, categorized according to high risk (HR) and moderate risk (MR) based on the annual parasite index (API). Surveys were managed using REDCap and analysed using MATLAB and GraphPad Prism. RESULTS: A total of 267 residents, mostly women (74%) were surveyed. Although no differences were observed on the knowledge of classical malaria symptoms between HR and MR regions, significant differences were found in knowledge and attitudes about transmission mechanisms, anti-malarial use and malaria diagnosis. Most responders in both regions (93.5% in MR, and 94.3% in HR areas) indicated use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to protect themselves from malaria, and 75.5% of responders in HR indicated they did nothing to prevent malaria transmission outdoors. Despite a high level of knowledge in the study regions, significant gaps persisted relating to practices. Self-medication and poor adherence to treatment, as well as lack of both indoor and outdoor vector control measures, were significantly associated with higher malaria risk. CONCLUSIONS: Although significant efforts are currently being made by the Ministry of Health to use community education as one of the main components of the control strategy, these generic education programmes may not be applicable to all endemic regions of Colombia given the substantial geographic, ethnic and cultural diversity. BioMed Central 2014-05-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4113137/ /pubmed/24885909 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-13-165 Text en Copyright © 2014 Forero et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Forero, David A
Chaparro, Pablo E
Vallejo, Andres F
Benavides, Yoldy
Gutiérrez, Juan B
Arévalo-Herrera, Myriam
Herrera, Sócrates
Knowledge, attitudes and practices of malaria in Colombia
title Knowledge, attitudes and practices of malaria in Colombia
title_full Knowledge, attitudes and practices of malaria in Colombia
title_fullStr Knowledge, attitudes and practices of malaria in Colombia
title_full_unstemmed Knowledge, attitudes and practices of malaria in Colombia
title_short Knowledge, attitudes and practices of malaria in Colombia
title_sort knowledge, attitudes and practices of malaria in colombia
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4113137/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24885909
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-13-165
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