Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Malaria Transmission and Its Prevention among the School Going Adolescents in Wardha District, Central India

BACKGROUND: Malaria causes 216 million cases and an estimated 655000 deaths in 2010 in the world. 80.5% of the 109 billion population of India lives in malaria risk areas. The purpose of this study was to determine the knowledge, attitude and practices of malaria transmission and its prevention among the school going adolescents. METHODOLOGY: A cross sectional study was conducted among school going adolescents in the rural area of District Wardha, Maharashtra, Central India. 1096 adolescents from eight government secondary schools were randomly selected. A pre-designed, pre-tested questionnaire was used for data collection. Data thus generated was entered in Microsoft Excel and analyzed using Epi Info 6.04 software package. Chi square value was used for testing the statistical significance. RESULTS: The mean age of the school going adolescents was 13.45 ± 1.91, for boys 13.43 ± 1.99 and 13.48 ± 1.85 year old for girls. About 84.7% of the respondents heard about the malaria disease and. 8.6% were aware about the causative agent. Transmission of malaria by mosquito bite was known to 69.8% of the adolescents. This was found significantly associated with male gender (X(2) = 4.21, p = 0.03). Some of the adolescents had misconception regarding the mode of transmission of malaria like houseflies (32.8%). Nearly half (51.1%) of the adolescents had knowledge of symptoms of malaria as fever. None of the adolescents were aware about the new strategy of insecticide treated bed nets. Majority of the adolescents (57.7%) knew commonest breeding habits of mosquitoes as dirty stagnant water. The main source of information about malaria to most of the adolescents was television and radio (51.7%). About 47.4% of the adolescents practiced the prevention of breeding places of the mosquitoes by cleaning the surrounding. Nearly one fifth (20.7%) of the adolescents were using mosquito net. During the study, 66 (6.02%) adolescents were suffering from fever out of that 12.1% adolescents had taken self medication. CONCLUSION: Despite widespread knowledge about the morbidity of malaria, understanding about its transmission, treatment and prevention was low. It is imperative to involve the health workers to provide active support and empower teachers with information about malaria causation and prevention strategies so that such knowledge could be passed on to learners.