Environmental Sanitation Practices on Malaria Control and Prevention in Abi Local Government Area, Cross River State, Nigeria

Aim: This study was conducted to determine the environmental sanitation practices on malaria prevention and control in Abi Local Government Area, Cross River State, Nigeria.

Study Design: A descriptive cross-sectional study design

Place and Duration of Study: Abi Local Government Area, Cross River State, Nigeria from June to August, 2016

Methodology: A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used to generate data from 450 adult respondents who were selected using multi-stage sampling technique. An observational checklist was used to assess the sanitary condition of residential dwellings and facilities. Data generated was entered into excel spread sheet and exported to Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20.0) software for analysis. Results were presented in frequencies, tables and charts. Chi-square was used to test for association between variables at 0.05 α level.

Results: It was revealed that 283 (62.9%) respondents exhibited poor environmental sanitation practices while 167 (37.1%) had good environmental sanitation practices. It also was observed that age (p=0.023), gender (p=0.000), educational status (p=0.000) and income (p=0.000) were found to be statistically significantly associated with environmental sanitation practices.

Conclusion: Hence, malaria intervention programmes should be redesigned or remodeled to include the core components of environmental sanitation to prevent mosquito breeding and mitigate malaria transmission in rural areas.