Abstract:

Malaria is a public health problem in some parts of Bangladesh, particularly in 13 districts in the north-east and south-east areas. Among them Bandarban district is highly endemic. There is a need for updating preventive measures on malaria for suitable control strategies among tribal populations. Basis of this need the present study assessed the perception of preventive measures of malaria among Tribal adults in higher endemic community. A community based cross-sectional study was done among 316 Tribals adults were selected by convenient sampling technique in Sadar Upazila of Bandarban district. Data were collected through face to face interview by using pretested semi structured questionnaire. Average age of the respondents was 35.0 years with (SD) ±8.9 years. 63.61% female and 36.39% male respondents. One third respondent’s levels of education were no schooling and 51.6% were housewives. About 98.1% of respondents correctly knew that malaria is transmitted by mosquito bite and fever was the recognized symptom for malaria (90.5%). Most of respondents 94.0% knew about malaria preventive measures. More than half 56.3% of respondents did not know about mosquito biting time. Only 20% respondents ever had malaria, among them 55.4% respondent’s malaria was diagnosed more than 3 days and 93.8% started treatment within 1 day after diagnosis of malaria. After multivariate analysis, no. of family member is associated with all family member at home sleep under LLIN (p=0.003, OR=0.323, 95% CI for OR from 0.152 to 0.687) while controlling others variables. Knowledge of malaria and preventive measures was considerable but the utilization of preventive measures was suboptimal.

Keywords: Perception of preventive measure, Malaria, Tribal adult, higher endemic community.

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