Factors Influencing the Utilisation of Insecticide Treated Bed Nets (ITN) by Pregnant Women in the WA East District of Upper West Region

ABSTRACT

Background: Malaria burden among vulnerable groups is of immense public health importance. Both local and international stakeholders in health are harnessing efforts to curtail the consequences of malaria through control interventions like indoor residual spraying (IRS), intermittent preventive treatment (IPTp), seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC), and ITN use to reduce transmission. ITNs are freely distributed to meet universal coverage and the Abuja declaration of attaining over 80% LLIN utilization. Despite this, only about a third of the over 80% of owners sleep under ITNs globally. In Africa, ITN use ranges from 13.8% in Cameroon, 25.7% in Nigeria to 41.3% in Papua Guinea. In the Ghanaian context, ITN use ranges from 20% in the middle belt, 23.1% in the northern belt, 47% in the southern belt and the country as a whole. The socio-demographic, individual and seasonal variations have been found to influence ITN use. Objective: To assess the influencing factors on the uptake of ITN among pregnant women in the Wa East district of the Upper West region. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted in four (4) sub-district health centers in the Wa East district. The district was stratified into 7 and simple random sampling used to select 4 health facilities. The 431 participants were recruited using random sampling through balloting. Descriptive summary statistics performed for frequencies while chi-test, simple and multiple logistic regressions performed to determine associations and strength of associations between ITN use and the independent variables with all results interpreted at 95% confidence level. Results: The proportion of pregnant women that used ITN was 44% with 84.2% (363/431) ownership and 97.5% (420/431) awareness. Significant predictors of ITN utilization on multiple logistic regression were uncovered to be age, parity, place of residence, number of ITN owned, the season of the year and the presence of mosquitoes (mosquitos’ population density) in locality after adjusting for other confounders. Conclusion: Ownership of ITN does not always translate to their use. About half of ITN owners do not use them. Key factors that are associated with ITN use are age, place of residence, number of ITNs owned and seasonal variations. ITN use among pregnant women in Wa East district is influenced by seasons and higher in the rainy season.