| dc.description.abstract | Malaria is a major public health challenge especially in the African region. It does not only affect maternal-child health but also hinders economic development where by a lot of money is wasted in combating its prevalence hence this study will possibly be helpful to policy makers in different faculties of health as far as decision making is concerned on understanding the determinants of malaria prevalence among pregnant women in Uganda. It offers helpful insights toward the changing malaria prevention and control particularly among pregnant women which might lead to the adjustment of malaria program activities. Pregnant women were the highest malaria morbidity contributors in Uganda in Various regions. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the determinants of malaria prevalence among pregnant women in Uganda.
Methods: This study used Secondary data from the UDHS Report of 2016 and it was cross sectional where the population of interest was pregnant women in the reproductive age group 15-49 years, who had fever in the past two weeks before the survey was conducted. From the 18506 respondents, 1872 were currently pregnant and from them 1125 respondents were considered to have had fever in the past two weeks prior to the Survey. The Dependent Variable was had fever in the past two weeks and the independent variables included Age, marital status, Place of Residence, Education, working Status, Distance to the healthy facility, Religion, Region, sleeping in a net, Wealth, source of antimalarial during Pregnancy and had Antenatal care (ANC). The independent variables were both socioeconomic and demographic and analysis was performed at two levels that is; Univariate and Bivariate to explore the association between the variables.
Results. This study confirmed the association between malaria and its determinants in Uganda whereby 39.6% of the respondents developed fever in the past two weeks and 60.4% did not. Thus, all concerned bodies, including the community should strengthen working ways to reduce malaria prevalence through stagnant water elimination of around people’s homes to cut the breeding site of the malaria vector mosquito. However, poorer social circumstances were observed and may account for the delayed progress in malaria control in the region.
With the results got, determinants of malaria prevalence amongst pregnant women is still high and hence policy makers should implement preventive measures like use of mosquito-nets through use of Insecticide-Treated bed nets (ITNs), use of strategies through the utilization of Intermittent Preventive Treatment Plan (IPTP) and continuous health education to pregnant mothers. This can done through continuous campaigns on use of nets and use of sources of media like social and mass media. | en_US |
