Decision-making on intra-household allocation of bed nets in Uganda: do households prioritize the most vulnerable members?

Malaria Journal

Research

Rachel Weber¹  April Monroe¹  Yukyan Lam²  Steven A Harvey²  Dana Loll³  Denis Muhangi³  Asaph Turinde Kabali⁴ 

[1] Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, 21202, Baltimore, MD, USA;Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe Street, 21205, Baltimore, MD, USA;Makerere University, School of Social Sciences, P.O. Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda;Team Initiatives Ltd, P.O. Box 3963, Teachers House, Plot 28/30 Bombo Road, Kampala, Uganda;

关键词: Malaria;    Insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs);    Bed net allocation;    Bed net access;    Mosquito nets;    Uganda;    Qualitative research;    Net use patterns;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-13-183

 received in 2014-03-11, accepted in 2014-05-07,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAccess to insecticide-treated bed nets has increased substantially in recent years, but ownership and use remain well below 100% in many malaria endemic areas. Understanding decision-making around net allocation in households with too few nets is essential to ensuring protection of the most vulnerable. This study explores household net allocation preferences and practices across four districts in Uganda.MethodsData collection consisted of eight focus group discussions, twelve in-depth interviews, and a structured questionnaire to inventory 107 sleeping spaces in 28 households.ResultsIn focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, participants almost unanimously stated that pregnant women, infants, and young children should be prioritized when allocating nets. However, sleeping space surveys reveal that heads of household sometimes receive priority over children less than five years of age when households have too few nets to cover all members.ConclusionsWhen asked directly, most net owners highlight the importance of allocating nets to the most biologically vulnerable household members. This is consistent with malaria behaviour change and health education messages. In actual allocation, however, factors other than biological vulnerability may influence who does and does not receive a net.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Lam et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.