Abstract:
Back-ground: School-age children have attracted relatively little attention as a group in need
of special measures to protect them against malaria. However, increasing success in lowering
the level of malaria transmission in many previously highly endemic areas will result in
children acquiring immunity to malaria later in life than has been the case in the past. The
assessment of knowledge of malaria among school students and its practice is necessary in
order to institute appropriate malaria prevention and control activities.
Objectives: To assess malaria related knowledge among primary school students in Jimma
zone, southwest of Ethiopia, 2017.
Methods: School based cross sectional study was conducted in three selected woredas of Jimma
zone, south west Ethiopia from march, 1 to 26, 2017. The study has recruited 432 samples of
school students in 6 selected schools from the three woredas. A multi stage sampling method
followed by simple random sampling was carried out to select the study participants. The data
were collected using pretested structured questionnaire adapted from related studies. Data was
checked for completeness and then entered into Epi Data 3.1 software and exported into SPSS
version 20 software for analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to describe findings. Bivariate
and multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to determine associated factors with
malaria related knowledge at P value less than 0.05.
Result: The mean score of students for knowledge related to malaria was (14.9 ).
The major source of information was mass media 64.5%. Maternal education is significant
predictors of knowledge of student towards malaria (AOR= 0.079, 95%CI; 0.018-0.359 pvalue=0.001) Being female, living in urban, information about spray of DDT and sleeping
under net were significant predictors of knowledge with (AOR= 2.92, 95%CI; 1.37-6.22),pvalue= 0.01(AOR= 0.25, 95%CI, 0.12-0.52), p- value= 0.01 (AOR= 5.23, 95%CI; 1.51-18.08),
p- value= 0.009, (AOR = 2.55, 95%CI, 1.03-6.29),p-value=0.01), respectively.
Conclusion: In this study knowledge related to malaria was found to be high among the
students. While, knowledge gap about the cause and transmission were also observed among
the students. Malaria health education should be strengthened in the schools to advance
malaria knowledge and more communication behavior of the students and health facilities
should give attention for schools through equipping teachers with information about malaria
prevention and control strategies so that such knowledge could be passed on to students.
