Abstract:

Background: Malaria is the most important parasitic disease of man. The human disease is a protozoan infection of red blood cells transmitted by the bite of a blood feeding female anopheles mosquito. Pregnant women constitute the main adult risk group for malaria and 80% of deaths due to malaria in Africa in pregnant women and children below 5 years.

Study objective: Assessment of knowledge and practices towards prevention and control of malaria among pregnant women in Kasulu district hospital.

Methodology: A hospital based cross sectional survey was conducted in Kasulu district hospital, Kasulu district west Tanzania. A structured questionnaire was administered to 190 respondents. The interviews were the pregnant women admitted at the hospital.

Results: A total of 190 pregnant women participated in the study and their overall knowledge and attitude towards malaria control and prevention and ITNs use was fairly good; 98.4% of the mothers associated malaria transmission and mosquito bites while 1.1% said it’s transmitted by standing too long on the sun. Most of the respondents know that prevention of malaria is by using nets 96.3%, others said it’s by using aerosolor mosquito coils 3.2%. 100% respondents reported to own and use bednets, 87.4% said that their nets are treated while 12.6% said that they use untreated bednets because of unavailability, costiful and not knowing how to use insecticide. 86.3% reported to use antimalarial for intermittent presumptive treatment of malaria while 13.7% said no.

Conclusion: Regardless of good knowledge of malaria disease on the area, there is a need for improving the availability of information through the preferred community channels, such as mass media and medical personnel. The majority of those surveyed knew what IRS was and close to all ready for IRS spraying. In the future, there is need for future studies to evaluate the distribution of ITNs.