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Could a culturally and age-appropriate song contribute towards malaria prevention in primary school learners?

BACKGROUND: Although it is a preventable disease, malaria continues to present one of the major global health challenges. The disease is especially deadly to children under the age of 5 years. This is partly due to the fact that they have yet to build up an immune system to help protect them against...

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Autores principales: Anderson, Chad M., Eloff, Irma, Kruger, Taneshka
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8976955/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35366887
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-022-04120-x
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author Anderson, Chad M.
Eloff, Irma
Kruger, Taneshka
author_facet Anderson, Chad M.
Eloff, Irma
Kruger, Taneshka
author_sort Anderson, Chad M.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Although it is a preventable disease, malaria continues to present one of the major global health challenges. The disease is especially deadly to children under the age of 5 years. This is partly due to the fact that they have yet to build up an immune system to help protect them against malaria. As a prevention strategy, music is one way of communicating knowledge to young children and could therefore potentially be used to change children’s behaviour in order to avoid getting sick from malaria. This exploratory study aimed to compare intervention strategies designed to educate and improve knowledge growth about malaria and its prevention in Grade 3 learners in a high-risk malaria region in Vhembe District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. METHODS: Various intervention strategies were employed and evaluated to determine the most effective intervention method. The study was split into two Phases. Phase 1 used a culturally and age-appropriate song as an intervention, along with a drama piece, a song and drama piece combination, and a control group. The most effective intervention strategy determined during Phase 1 was then subjected to Phase 2, against a control group to validate its efficacy. Questionnaires were used during pre-intervention and post-intervention interviews to evaluate the knowledge growth, if any, of the learners of selected primary schools in two different areas in Vhembe District. Pre-intervention interviews were followed by a specific intervention, based on the respective study groups. After 6 weeks, the post-intervention interviews were done to determine how much learners managed to learn and retain from the intervention received. RESULTS: The study found that the group that had only the song as intervention was the most effective learning intervention method in both Phases 1 and 2. Both phases showed that there was statistical significance in almost all of the nine questions asked on the questionnaires. CONCLUSIONS: The study concluded that a culturally and age-appropriate song can play a significant role in developing behavioural changes and spreading awareness against disease in a high-risk malaria region.
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spelling pubmed-89769552022-04-04 Could a culturally and age-appropriate song contribute towards malaria prevention in primary school learners? Anderson, Chad M. Eloff, Irma Kruger, Taneshka Malar J Research BACKGROUND: Although it is a preventable disease, malaria continues to present one of the major global health challenges. The disease is especially deadly to children under the age of 5 years. This is partly due to the fact that they have yet to build up an immune system to help protect them against malaria. As a prevention strategy, music is one way of communicating knowledge to young children and could therefore potentially be used to change children’s behaviour in order to avoid getting sick from malaria. This exploratory study aimed to compare intervention strategies designed to educate and improve knowledge growth about malaria and its prevention in Grade 3 learners in a high-risk malaria region in Vhembe District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. METHODS: Various intervention strategies were employed and evaluated to determine the most effective intervention method. The study was split into two Phases. Phase 1 used a culturally and age-appropriate song as an intervention, along with a drama piece, a song and drama piece combination, and a control group. The most effective intervention strategy determined during Phase 1 was then subjected to Phase 2, against a control group to validate its efficacy. Questionnaires were used during pre-intervention and post-intervention interviews to evaluate the knowledge growth, if any, of the learners of selected primary schools in two different areas in Vhembe District. Pre-intervention interviews were followed by a specific intervention, based on the respective study groups. After 6 weeks, the post-intervention interviews were done to determine how much learners managed to learn and retain from the intervention received. RESULTS: The study found that the group that had only the song as intervention was the most effective learning intervention method in both Phases 1 and 2. Both phases showed that there was statistical significance in almost all of the nine questions asked on the questionnaires. CONCLUSIONS: The study concluded that a culturally and age-appropriate song can play a significant role in developing behavioural changes and spreading awareness against disease in a high-risk malaria region. BioMed Central 2022-04-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8976955/ /pubmed/35366887 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-022-04120-x Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Anderson, Chad M.
Eloff, Irma
Kruger, Taneshka
Could a culturally and age-appropriate song contribute towards malaria prevention in primary school learners?
title Could a culturally and age-appropriate song contribute towards malaria prevention in primary school learners?
title_full Could a culturally and age-appropriate song contribute towards malaria prevention in primary school learners?
title_fullStr Could a culturally and age-appropriate song contribute towards malaria prevention in primary school learners?
title_full_unstemmed Could a culturally and age-appropriate song contribute towards malaria prevention in primary school learners?
title_short Could a culturally and age-appropriate song contribute towards malaria prevention in primary school learners?
title_sort could a culturally and age-appropriate song contribute towards malaria prevention in primary school learners?
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8976955/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35366887
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12936-022-04120-x
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