Malaria prevalence and use of insecticide treated nets among children under ten years receiving treatment at Katakwi Health Centre IV

Abstract

Despite the fact that the World Health organization (WHO) and partner countries are trying their best to combat the spread of malaria through many preventive measures, such as use of insecticide treated nets as evident in the World Malaria report, the prevalence is still shocking. The WHO 2018 report revealed that, malaria was still a global scourge causing at least 15% of human death annually. The main objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of malaria and use of insecticide treated nets. A cross sectional survey was carried out at Katakwi Health center IV Katakwi, blood sample was collected from each child under ten years who fulfilled the inclusion criteria to ascertain the presence of malaria parasites by microscopic examination of Geimsa stained thick and thin blood smear. A total of 217 under ten years aged children was recruited and ascertained for parasitemia using microscopic examination. The overall occurrence of malaria was 41.6%. The association between the usage of insecticide treated nets and occurrence of malaria manifested a high statistical significance of P = 0.02. In conclusion, use of Insecticide treated nets alone may not be able to reduce the malaria burden. Therefore , besides usage of insecticide treated nets , other preventive measures should be applied such as staying inside the houses during the peak biting hours of mosquitoes, introducing mosquito repellant Vaseline’s for those who stay outside, especially children below 10 years involved in night study, clearing bushes and draining stagnant water and sensitizing the community on better practices.