Abstract:
Introduction: Malaria is among the top ten causes of morbidity and mortality in children in
Rwanda. Despite the knowledge that school children got from school, the attitudes and health
practice of school children towards malaria prevention are still questionable.
Aim: The study aimed at describing and examining the relationship between curriculum-based
malaria knowledge, attitude and practices towards malaria prevention among school children in
one public school in Rwanda.
Methods: Knowledge, attitude and practice and health belief models guided the study. A
quantitative approach using a descriptive correlational study design was used. A stratified
random sampling was used to obtain a sample of 160 school children aged 11-17 years studying
in one public school. Data was collected using an instrument developed from in-depth literature
in the form of a structured interview schedule with four sections namely the demographic data,
level of knowledge, level of attitude and level of practice. Face to face interview was used to
elicit information from the respondents. Descriptive statistics, the Pearson‘s correlation
coefficient, linear regression and the Chi-square test as well as Fisher Exact test were used to
analyse the data. SPSS version 21.0 was used in data analysis.
Results: Forty five (28.13%) have high knowledge, 108 (67.5%) and 7 (4.38%) have moderate
and low knowledge respectively. Sixty four (40%) demonstrated positive attitude and 96 (60%)
have negative attitude towards malaria prevention. One hundred and nineteen (74.38%) have
good practice whilst 41 (25.63%) have poor practice towards malaria prevention. The study finds
a significant weak positive correlation between knowledge and attitude (r=0.162, p=0.041), and
between attitude and practice (r=0.219, p=0.005); and a weak negative non-significant
correlation between knowledge and practices towards malaria prevention (r=-0.010, p=0.898).
Knowledge contributes only 2.6% of increase in attitude (R2=0.026). Furthermore, attitude had
an impact of only 4.8% on practice (R2=0.048).
Conclusion: The results predicted that as knowledge increases, attitude towards malaria also
increases. Again, an increase in attitude predicted an increase in the level of practice towards
malaria prevention among school children. Therefore, pediatric nurses should device and
intensify individualized strategies to improve knowledge and correct attitudes, consequently
good practice habits towards malaria among school children. Moreover, more contributory
factors to poor attitude and practice habits should be identified.
