Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Regarding Malaria Prevention of the Government Official Working in the Phanom Dong Rak Mountain Range, Sisaket province, Thailand

Abstract

Sisaket is 1 in 5 provinces with the highest incidence of malaria. In 2017, 780 patients were found which was the 3rd most in Thailand. In 2018, 1,532 cases were reported in Thailand and 378 cases were reported from Sisaket. Most of the malaria cases were found among rubber tappers, soldiers, and National park officers. They were a group of government officials that can plan to prevent malaria by themselves but we found a high incident rate of malaria. However, it had not found the study of the root cause and the risk opportunities in this group. A descriptive-cross-sectional study described the knowledge, attitudes, and practice regarding malaria prevention of the Government Official Working in the Phanom Dong Rak Mountain Range, Sisaket province. This study was enrolled 198 participants who performed by utilizing the database of the project of the potential development of malaria volunteers and the risk-group in the malaria epidemic area, 2018 from October 2017 to March 2018. The descriptive statistics were used to analyze the outcome of knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding malaria prevention with presenting in terms of frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. The result was found 85.65% were male, the average age was 32.14 years (SD = 10.89), and mostly in 20-30 years old. Mostly of the position, we found in the reconnaissance unit and a park ranger were 44.32%. The government officials with a history of malaria were 37.88%. The most common of the species of Plasmodium were PV, Mixed and PF at 42.67%, 28.00, and 14.66% respectively. The reconnaissance unit with a history of malaria illness was 56.41%. Most of the infection groups, 38.64% were PV species infection and 70.45% had never slept in the net or slept sometimes when entering the forest. The average knowledge score was 6.58 (SD = 0.92) and mostly at a good level of 92.29%. The average attitude score was 18.46 (SD = 1.86) and mostly at a fair level of 67.17%. The practice regarding preventing malaria, we found 10.61% did not have mosquito nets, and 33.33% had ordinary nets. When working or staying overnight in the forest, 43.93% slept in the insecticide net every time, 54.04% use mosquito repellent and 67.68% wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants occasionally. 86.36% wanted to insecticide planting in the bed net, and 61.62% wanted to support the mosquito net or mosquito insecticide net.

Therefore, relevant work should be created the intervention to involved to raise awareness, perception of the severity of malaria, and supporting the device with enough insecticide net to prevent mosquitoes.