Malaria related knowledge among primary school students in jimma zone, oromia southwest of Ethiopia

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.