What is it about?
We have conducted a study at the community level to assess the knowledge, attitude, prevention, and care-seeking practices of adolescents, a less studied population group, regarding malaria, in an area where malaria transmission persists in Senegal. Our findings showed that most of the adolescents had poor knowledge of malaria and low uptake of malaria preventive measures.
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Why is it important?
As most of the endemic countries like Senegal are shifting from control to elimination due to the implementation of several control measures, it is important to consider all age groups for malaria-targeted interventions. We believed that understanding the knowledge, attitude, prevention and care-seeking behavior of adolescents could help to design tailored interventions to optimize their use of malaria prevention and control measures, in order to reduce the disease burden and reach the elimination goal.
Perspectives
I hope our results will alert malaria control programs, to consider educational interventions for adolescents to raise their awareness regarding malaria, and to improve their access to and their use of preventive measures. We cannot reach malaria elimination without targeting adolescents in control activities.
Mrs Fassiatou TAIROU
Universite Cheikh Anta Diop
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Malaria prevention knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) among adolescents living in an area of persistent transmission in Senegal: Results from a cross-sectional study, PLoS ONE, December 2022, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274656.
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