Caretakers’ understanding of malaria, use of insecticide treated net and care seeking-behavior for febrile illness of their children in Ethiopia

Table 3 Perception of causations and preventive strategies of malaria, Ethiopia

	Frequency	%
Perception of causation
Misquote bite	471	66.4
Stagnant water	67	9.4
Poor sanitation/hygiene	67	9.4
Weather or cold	45	6.3
Foul smell from dirty things	43	6.1
Drinking dirty water	36	5.1
Hunger	19	2.7
Diets^a	16	2.3
Don’t know	38	5.4
Others^b	54	7.6
Knowledge of prevention strategies
Sleeping under Insecticide treated net	512	72.2
Clean home and surroundings	275	38.8
Draining stagnant water	113	15.9
Spraying home and around with Indoor Residual Spraying chemicals	50	7.1
Sanitation and personal hygiene	27	3.8
Using toilet	18	2.5
Eating good diet	17	2.4
Avoid walking in rain	15	2.1
Drinking clean water	13	1.8
Don’t know	54	7.6
Others^c	26	3.4

^adirty, cold, leftover, sweaty, roasted maize, sugarcane, fruits (mango, Papaya, avocado, tomato)
^bwalking in weed (13), flower from trees (13), Getting soaked with rain water (8), Walking in sun (6), Thirsty (3), dressing hot and moist clothes (1), walking in wet grass (1), earth’s soul-‘Afura lafaa’ (1), Contamination by flies (1), Parasite/rammoo adda adda (1)
^cEating fresh food (5), eating chill or pepper (3), closing doors (3), smoking (2), avoid walking during sunny time (2), avoid cold weather (2), eating onion (2), avoid eating sugarcane (1), not eating sweaty food (1), avoid fruits such as papaya (1), drinking bile (hadhoftu-1), avoid eating roasted maize (1), spraying fleet (1), not eating damaged avocadao (1)

ISSN: 1471-2334