Assistant Lecturer
Goa Medical College, Goa
Title of the project (CB): Community behavior and its determinants in relation to malaria prevention and control.
Summary:
Behavioural Change has been a cornerstone of malaria prevention and control strategies. BCC activities should complement the malaria scale-up activities to ensure their effectiveness and support overall improvements in community knowledge, attitudes and practices. A lot of emphasis has been paid in the last few years on IEC activities pertaining to malaria control and availability of facilities like the Insecticide Treated Nets, rapid Diagnostic Kits for Malaria detection, availability of treatment facilities at the grass root level and supply of larvivorous fish through hatcheries at the primary care facilities. However a rigorous evaluation of these interventions in terms of the knowledge to action gap, i.e. an overall effectiveness of Information Education Communication on behavioural change has never been done.
This study has, therefore, been proposed to assess the key behaviors of communities regarding prevention and control of malaria in selected high and low prevalence areas, to identify the barriers and facilitators associated with these behaviors, to conduct input and process evaluation of the existing Behavioral Change Communication Interventions (BCCI) for prevention and control of malaria in the selected sites, and to formulate and implement changes in the existing BCCI strategy and assess its impact on malaria burden in Goa.