Social economic factors and malaria transmission in Lower Moshi, Northern Tanzania

摘要

Background For many years social economic status has been used as an indicator to characterize malaria treatment seeking behaviors of communities and their adherence to malaria control programs. The present study was therefore conducted to assess the influence of household social economic status, knowledge, attitude and practice on treatment seeking behaviors, distance to health facilities and vector control measures in the Lower Moshi area, northern Tanzania. Methods A cross-sectional household survey was carried out, a quantitative method was used to collect information from the households, and the household socio-economic status was estimated by employing a household asset-based approach. The structured questionnaire also collected information on malaria knowledge, attitudes and treatment seeking behaviors. Results A total of 197 (68.8% were female) household heads were interviewed. Distance to the health centers influenced malaria treatment seeking behaviors especially for children (P?=?0.001) and the number of visits to the health facilities made by the household members (P?=?0.001). The head of the households' level of education had an influence on bed-net retreatment (P?