The Effectiveness of Community Bed Net Use on Malaria Parasitemia among Children Less Than 5 Years Old in Liberia.

The Effectiveness of Community Bed Net Use on Malaria Parasitemia among Children Less Than 5 Years Old in Liberia. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2018 Jan 22;: Authors: Stebbins RC, Emch M, Meshnick SR Abstract In 2013, the under-5 mortality rate in Liberia was 71 deaths per 1,000 live births, with malaria responsible for 22% of those deaths. One of the primary existing control tools, long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets (LLINs), is thought to be dually effective, acting as a physical barrier but also decreasing the mosquito population in communities. However, there has been little investigation into the protective effects of community-wide bed net use above and beyond the individual level. Using data from the population-representative 2011 Liberia Malaria Indicator Survey, we estimated the association between proportion of a community using LLINs and malaria in children using multi-level logistic regression. To investigate the potential effect measure modification of the relationship by urbanicity, we included an interaction term and calculated stratum-specific prevalence odds ratios (PORs) for rural and urban communities. We calculated a POR of malaria for an absolute 10% increase in community bed net use of 1.13 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.91, 1.41) and 0.35 (95% CI: 0.13, 0.92) for rural and urban communities, respectively, indicating a strong, though imprecise, protective effect within urban communities only. Our results indicate ...
Source: The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene - Category: Tropical Medicine Authors: Tags: Am J Trop Med Hyg Source Type: research