Chansa Mulenga and Boniface Kawimbe
Background: Malaria is the commonest cause of fever, morbidity and mortality in the tropics. A good number of people are able to recognize the symptoms and initiate treatment. However lack of clinical evaluation of the patients by trained health professionals, may delay appropriate treatment and promote drug resistant. Objective: To determine the prevalence of self-treatment of malaria among the people with regard to knowledge and factors that may influence health seeking behavior. Method: Community based cross section descriptive study carried among 365patients buying medicines from local drugstores. A structured questionnaire was used to gather data entered in Epi Data 3.1 and analysis done using SPSS version 16.0. To ascertain association between dependent and independent variables, binary logistic regression and variables with p-value of less than or equal to 0.05 were entered into multivariate regression analysis. Results: Among the 365 patients interviewed 150 bought antimalarials 150/365 (41.1%). The overall knowledge was 44.7% and significantly associated with income, education and occupation. Compared to respondents with income > K1000, respondents with income < K500 were 94% (AOR=0.06; 95% CI [0.01, 0.21]) less likely to be knowledgeable. Respondents with tertially education were 2.73 (95% CI [1.50, 4.89]) times more likely to be knowledgeable compared to respondents with primary education. Compared to respondents with othersa occupations, professionals were 5.97 (95% CI [2.27, 15.7]) times more likely to be knowledgeable. Sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (fansidar) is by far the antimalaria drug that was used 51.3%. About 66.7% attributed to overcrowding and 72.7% to not being attended to in less than 2 hours upon arrival at health facility as reasons for not seeking treatment at government facilities. Conclusion: Prevalence of self-medication was high 41.1% and most people lacked adequate knowledge on malaria. The individual’s level of formal education, income and occupation were determinants knowledge.
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