Peoples’ Belief, Attitude, and Practice in the Use of Insecticide Treated Bed Net (ITN): The Case of Serbo, Nada, and Asendabo Towns, Jimma Zone, Southwest Ethiopia.

Abstract

The effort made to control malaria seems somewhat under the control of those people living in the malarious areas. Moreover, the tendency seems to shift from cure to prevention as malaria doesn’t have effective vaccine  or effective drug for mass chemoprophylaxis. Thus, this study was designed to assess the belief, attitude, and practice of ITN use to prevent malaria by peoples of Serbo, Assendabo, and Nada Towns. Samples of 274 people were taken from Serbo, Assendabo, and Omo Nada towns through multi-stage random sampling of lottery method. The response of 264 respondents collected through questionnaire was analyzed and interpreted using SPSS software version 16. The result shows people that have lower perceived susceptibility to malaria (78.8%), lower perceived severity of the disease malaria (73.1%), lower perceived self-efficacy in the use of ITN (56.4%), higher perceived barriers in the use of ITN (68.9%), and lower perceived benefit of ITN (56.4%). In addition, the majority of the subjects (74.6%) were found to have negative attitude towards ITN. Moreover, households mentioned some unintended uses of ITN at home indicating abuse in the use of ITN. These all indicate that the households have misconceptions and misunderstandings about malaria, negative attitude towards ITN, and they don’t have firm belief in ITN to protect them from malaria. More or less, all subjects know that ITN is one of the malaria protection mechanisms. Thus, the majority of the subjects do not use ITN properly and consistently. The majority have low perceived susceptibility to malaria, severity of malaria, benefit of ITN, self-efficacy to use ITN and higher perceived barriers to use ITN properly and consistently. Moreover, the majority of the households have negative attitude for ITN. In addition, some households don’t know how malaria is transmitted and the right preventive measures. Thus, a balance of knowledge, belief, and positive attitude toward ITN should be maintained for effective malaria prevention.

Keywords: ITN, Belief, Attitude, Serbo, Asandabo, Omonada