Predictors of Knowledge About Malaria in India (Survey‪)‬

Introduction It is more than 125 years since CLA Laveran, a French scientist discovered the malarial parasite, yet even today malaria continues to be the world's most important tropical disease and kills more people than any other disease except tuberculosis. It is a public health problem in more than 100 countries, inhabited by a total of some 2400 million people, about 40% of the world's population (1). In India although the malaria incidence has now been reduced to 1.82 million cases from about 75 million cases in 1950s, it continues to be the cause for concern (2). Over the past few decades the proportion of Plasmodium falciparum cases has increased to 47.5% and it has become resistant to conventional antimalarial drugs. Moreover, there is vector resistance to conventionally used insecticides. The National Health Policy (2002) has set the goals of reduction in mortality on account of malaria by 50% by 2010 and efficient control of morbidity (3). Reduction of malarial morbidity and mortality is also important to meet the overall objectives of reducing poverty and has been included in the Millennium Development Goals. To achieve these targets it is imperative to have active community participation to control malaria. Community participation in turn depends on people's knowledge and attitude towards the disease. There is a need to know the existing knowledge and attitudes of population regarding malaria as a disease, its treatment and control. Most organised vector control strategies require public support of one kind or another and the extent of people's cooperation can determine the success or failure of the entire campaign (4). In fact human behaviour as a contributing factor has been largely neglected in research on vector borne diseases in part because of the long-standing separation of the behavioural disorder from the physical and biomedical disciplines (5). In India, inspite of several mass communication and educational approaches, people's participation is far below expectations. In light of this, we thought it relevant to examine the factors that predict the knowledge of Indian population regarding malaria. With this aim, we conducted this study throughout the country.