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Knowledge of Communities about Malaria Control Strategies in Lindi Urban District, Tanzania

Nkulikwa ZA, Malago JJ and William GW

Despite the efforts to minimize malaria infection in Tanzania, its prevalence persists. To what factors is the persistence be attributed? Does people’s lack of knowledge, impact negatively on their receptivity of malarial preventive and control strategies? This paper examines knowledge about control strategies of malaria, both curative and preventive, among local native of Lindi Urban district, in Tanzania, with the specific objectives to determine people’s knowledge about malaria control strategies. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 356 respondents. Focus group discussion were employed in eliciting qualitative information whereas a structured questionnaire was utilized to collect quantitative data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the analysis of these data. Descriptive analyses involved computation of frequency and percentages. Inferential measures were determined through Chi-square test. Knowledge of participants was significantly associated (P0.05) between malarial knowledge, sex, age of respondents and total number of members per household. Conclusively, this paper found that participants had information about malaria preventive strategies; they hardly had knowledge about the cause of malaria, importance of using mosquito nets consistently in protecting themselves from disease, and had no knowledge about how to integrate as well as implement various malaria preventative measures. Additionally, some misconceptions among respondents were discerned regarding cure of malaria, symptoms, and the effectiveness of bed nets