%0 Journal Article
%T Two-year evaluation of Intermittent Preventive Treatment for Children (IPTc) combined with timely home treatment for malaria control in Ghana
%A Collins K Ahorlu
%A Kwadwo A Koram
%A Atsu Seake-Kwawu
%A Mitchell G Weiss
%J Malaria Journal
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1475-2875-10-127
%X The main objective in the second year was to demonstrate whether the two interventions would further reduce parasite prevalence and malaria-related febrile illness in the study population.This was an intervention study designed to compare baseline and evaluation findings without a control group. The study combined home-based delivery of intermittent preventive treatment for children (IPTc) aged 6 - 60 months and home treatment of suspected febrile malaria-related illness within 24 hours. All children aged 6 - 60 months received home-based delivery of intermittent preventive treatment using amodiaquine + artesunate, delivered at home by community assistants every four months (6 times in 24 months). Malaria parasite prevalence surveys were conducted before the first and after the third and sixth IPTc to the children. The evaluation surveys were done four months after the third and sixth IPTc was given.Parasite prevalence which reduced from 25% to 3.0% at year-one evaluation had reduced further from 3% to 1% at year-two-evaluation. At baseline, 13.8% of the children were febrile (axilary temperature of ¡Ý37.5¡ãC) compared to 2.2% at year-one-evaluation while 2.1% were febrile at year-two-evaluation.The year-two-evaluation result indicates that IPTc given three times in a year (every four months) combined with timely treatment of febrile malaria illness, is effective to reduce malaria parasite prevalence in children aged 6 to 60 months in the study community. This must give hope to malaria control programme managers in sub-Saharan Africa where the burden of the disease is most debilitating.Malaria is estimated to cause between 300 and 500 million clinical cases with about 700,000 to 1.6 million deaths every year. About 94% of these deaths are believed to occur in sub-Saharan Africa [1,2]. In 2006 malaria accounted for 37.5% of all outpatient clinic visits, 36.0% of all admissions and about 33.4% of all deaths in children under five years of age in Ghana [3]. In line with
%U http://www.malariajournal.com/content/10/1/127