Effectiveness of Malaria education program on knowledge, attitude and practice of Malaria prevention among university students in Conakry, Guinea

In Guinea, malaria infection is susceptible to 100% of the whole country’s population. The high rate of malaria prevalence raises concerns for public health. The primary cause of malaria parasite is Plasmodium falciparum in Guinea. Previous studies showed that the knowledge, attitude and practice of malaria prevention was low among community in Guinea. The objectives of this study were to develop, implement and compare the effectiveness of malaria education program using the Health Belief Model (HBM) to increase the knowledge, attitude and practice of malaria prevention among university students in Conakry, Guinea. The eight sessions that comprised the malaria education program’s content were founded on the HBM components. This program took approximately 6 hours and 30 minutes. Respondents were required to complete a questionnaire over four time points. The study design was clustered Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT), with 81 participants from each control and intervention group, using clustered random sampling. Generalized Estimated Equation (GEE) was used. In the intervention group, there was 81 out of 126 respondents agreed to participate this study (64.3%) whereas for control group, 81 out of 85 respondents agreed to participate this study (95.3%). By two months follow up, the attrition rate was 76.5% and 75.3% for intervention and control group respectively. Intention to treat (ITT) was used to deal with the missing data. Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) was used to determine the effectiveness of the malaria education program on malaria prevention knowledge, attitudes, and practices, adjusted with covariates. Respondents in the intervention group had higher knowledge score at post-test and 2 months follow up (B= 1.790, 95% CI: 0.829, 2.751, P<0.001; B=1.203, 95% CI: 0.034, 2.372, P=0.044) and higher practice score at 2 weeks and 2 months follow up (B= 3.338, 95% CI: 1.115, 5.562, P=0.003; B= 2.456, 95% CI: 0.201, 4.711, P=0.033) compared to control group at baseline, adjusted with covariates respectively. This study showed that the malaria education program was effective in improving the knowledge and practice of malaria prevention compared to control group. Policy makers can use this intervention program as a guideline to educate the public about the correct information on malaria. This research is closely aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 3 (Good health and well-being). This research supports the SDG framework by addressing both immediate health challenges (malaria prevention) and long-term structural improvements (educational empowerment and capacity building). This kind of research provides actionable strategies for reducing the disease burden, improving public health and achieving global health targets.

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