Rwanda (2012): TRaC Malaria Control Behavioral Tracking Survey

Rwanda is a small, land-locked country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa, with the entire population at risk for malaria, including an estimated 1.8 million children under five and 450,000 pregnant women per year. During the last four years, Rwanda has made significant progress in scaling up malaria control interventions, including promoting insecticide treated bed nets (ITNs), indoor residual spraying (IRS), and prompt fever treatment. PSI's current activities in Rwanda include targeting LLINs delivery from the central level to the hea
lth centers level, providing prepackaged malaria treatment in the public sector, and supporting BCC activities for IRS and ITN use. Funding for PSI Rwanda activities comes from USAID-BCSM and the Global Fund. The purpose of the current study is to provide an assessment of the key health behaviors associated with bednet use and prompt fever treatment and to evaluate which communication channels have the strongest impact with regards to malaria control activities. The population for this study is the general population, including pregnant women and mothers of children under five in all districts in Rwanda. Respondents of the survey were restricted to male or females aged 15-49 years old. In total, a sample size of 7,353 households was established using a stratified two-stage cluster sampling approach, aimed at collecting nationally representative data, proportional to province size. The questionaire included questions on the malaria health behaviors of interest (bed net ownership and use and fever treatment) as well as demographic variables and the opportunity, ability, and motivation (OAM) variables.