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Home Visits to Assess the Reliability of Caregiver-Reported Use of Insecticide-Treated Bednets by Children in Machinga District, Malawi

2015; American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene; Volume: 92; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4269/ajtmh.14-0768

1476-1645

Jacklyn Wong, Monica P. Shah, Dyson Mwandama, John E. Gimnig, Kim A. Lindblade, Don P. Mathanga,

Antibiotic Use and Resistance

A malaria cohort study was conducted among young children in Machinga District, Malawi, following distribution of insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) in May 2012. To assess ITN use, two independently sampled subsets of children (211 during survey 1 [December 2012-January 2013] and 325 during survey 2 [September-October 2013]) were randomly selected to compare the proportions of positive and negative agreement between caregiver verbal reports at monthly interviews with visual observation of the ITN at home visits. Caregiver-reported ITN use was consistently high during both surveys (98.1% and 96.0%, respectively; P = 0.17). Home visit-based ITN use fell significantly (P < 0.001) from survey 1 (98.6%) to survey 2 (88.6%). The proportions of positive agreement between caregiver report and home visit in the first and second surveys were 98.8% (95% confidence interval [CI] 97.6-99.8%) and 93.3% (95% CI 91.2-95.3%), respectively. The proportions of negative agreement in the first and second surveys were 28.6% (95% CI 0-75.0%) and 20.0% (95% CI 0.1-35.0%), respectively. ITN use by children was high in Machinga District, and caregiver reports and home visits with visual confirmation of the net demonstrated a high level of agreement for use of ITNs, but a low level of agreement when ITNs were not used.