Perception and awareness of health policy actors on malaria vaccine policy implementation in Nigeria

International Conference And Expo on Biomedical Engineering

August 25, 2023 | Webinar

Adaugo Nnaji

Cyprus international university, Nigeria

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Biomed Sci

Abstract :

In Nigeria, malaria is a significant public health issue that causes more cases of deaths than HIV/AIDS, killing one child every two minutes. The parasites that cause malaria are transmitted by mosquitoes. The National Malaria Service was succeeded by the National Malaria Control Programme in 1986, and the National Malaria Elimination Programme later established in 2013 in response to the country's desire for a malaria-free nation. Malaria control is historically the oldest control program in Nigeria, having been in place since 1948.The purpose of the study was to evaluate how health policy players perceived and were informed about Nigeria's implementation of the malaria vaccination strategy. A descriptive study was conducted to assess opinions and perception of policy actors on implementation of a vaccine program against malaria in Nigeria. Descriptive statistics were carried out to study the characteristics of the population and the univariate analysis of the responses to the questions raised to the participants. Multinomial logistic regression was conducted to evaluate the association between demographic characteristics and the responses. Results: The study revealed that the malaria vaccine awareness was poor with only 48.9% of the policy actors who have previous knowledge of malaria vaccine. Majority of participants (67.8%) declared that they are aware of the importance of vaccine policy in the efforts on tackling the diseases transmission. The more the year of work experience of the participants increases, the odds of being more likely to be aware of the malaria vaccine increases [OR 2.491(1.183-5.250),p-value<0.05]. Conclusion: It is recommended that policy makers develop methods of educating populations and increase the awareness on the acceptability of the vaccine and ensure that an affordable malaria vaccine program is implemented in the population. Keywords: Vaccines, malaria control, policy.

Biography :

Adaugo Nnaji is a Health care Professional who has a M.Sc. in Health care organization management from Cyprus international university and is currently a PhD candidate. She has authored and co-authored articles on various topics that address public health issues varying from maternal mortality, occupational health hazards, Hiv/Aids.