Knowledge, practices and attitudes about malaria in the municipality of Lloró, Chocó, Colombia

Conocimientos, prácticas y actitudes sobre la malaria en el Municipio de LLoró, Chocó, Colombia

Objective: to determine the knowledge, attitudes and practices about malaria in the municipality of Lloró, Chocó, Colombia. Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease if the right strategies are presented; Lloró, is one of the municipalities with the highest rates of malaria in Colombia; very few studies evaluate the knowledge, practices and attitudes towards this preventable disease and none is directed to this population. In order to strengthen the strategies of prevention, timely diagnosis and adherence to treatment, this study was conducted. Material and Methods: cross-sectional study performed by consecutive probabilistic convenience sampling. A 50 questions personal interview survey was applied. In order to analyze relative and absolute frequencies were used; Results: 374 surveys were applied in the urban area of Lloró, Chocó. 78,96 % of the population has suffered malaria, 88,76 % recognized the disease as malaria, 86,46 % understand the mechanism of infection, 96,4 % recognize malaria as a problem, 51 % takes preventive action against malaria, 52.74 % uses mosquito netting as a prevention method, 98,27 % goes to the health provider when they get malaria, 75,5 % consumes the whole antimalarial treatment. Conclusion: the population has adequate knowledge about the disease, however practices and attitudes were inadequate, which could be intervened by the use of preventive education.