ATTITUDE TOWARDS MALARIA PREVENTION STRATEGIES AMONG REGISTERED ANTENATAL CARE PREGNANT WOMEN IN NORTH-EAST, ZONE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study assessed the attitude of malaria prevention strategies among registered antenatal
care pregnant women in North-East, zone, Nigeria using ex-post facto research design.
Multistage sampling technique consisting of simple random, stratified, proportionate and
systematic sampling techniques were used to draw a sample from a population of 503,661
antenatal care (ANC) registered pregnant women from six (6) states in North-east zone, Nigeria.
The sampled states were; Adamawa (80,578), Bauchi (140,345), Borno (100,345), Gombe
(63,290), Taraba (54,785) and Yobe (64,321). Thus, a total of 1,200 pregnant women attending
ANC formed the respondents. The instrument for data collection was a researcher-developed
validated close-ended questionnaire. The instrument was tested using Cronbach Alpha and a
reliability index of 0.80 was obtained from the pilot study result. The data collected was analysed
using International Business Machine (IBM) Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS)
version 25.0. The descriptive statistics of mean scores and standard deviations were used to
answer the research question. Inferential statistics of one sample t-test was used to test
formulated null hypothesis. The finding of the study revealed that; pregnant women in North-
East zone have positive attitude towards malaria prevention strategies (t = 11.487; p = 0.000).
The conclusion drawn was that the registered ANC pregnant women have positive attitude to the
adoption and use of malaria prevention strategies. Based on conclusion, it was recommended
that, Health educators and health care workers should sustain the positive attitude of ANC
registered pregnant women towards malaria prevention strategies and also, the women should
be encouraged to use mosquito repellent lotion or cream and coil/dried billed of orange
back/grass as repellents to prevent malaria during pregnancy.