Insecticide-treated net (ITN) ownership, usage, and malaria transmission in the highlands of western Kenya

Cross-sectional surveys were conducted on ITN ownership (possession), compliance (actual usage among those who own ITNs), and malaria infections in occupants of randomly sampled houses in the dry and the rainy seasons of 2009.Despite ITN ownership reaching more than 71%, compliance was low at 56.3%. The compliance rate was significantly higher during the rainy season compared with the dry season (62% vs. 49.6%). Both malaria parasite prevalence (11.8% vs. 5.1%) and vector densities (1.0 vs.0.4 female/house/night) were significantly higher during the rainy season than during the dry season. Other important factors affecting the use of ITNs include: a household education level of at least primary school level, significantly high numbers of nuisance mosquitoes, and low indoor temperatures. Malaria prevalence in the rainy season was about 30% lower in ITN users than in non-ITN users, but this percentage was not significantly different during the dry season.In malaria hypo-mesoendemic highland regions of western Kenya, the gap between ITNownership and usage is generally high with greater usage recorded during the high transmission season. Because of the low compliance among those who own ITNs, there is a need to sensitize households on sustained use of ITNs in order to optimize their role as a malaria control tool.Insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) used for protection against mosquito bites have proven to be a practical, highly effective, and cost-effective intervention against malaria [1]. The evidence of the public health impact of ITNs, supporting their wide-scale use in Africa, is drawn from areas of stable malaria transmission where Plasmodium falciparum infection prevalence in the community is often over 40% [1,2]. Community-based randomized controlled trials (RCT) in these regions have documented average reductions of 20% in all causes of mortality in children under 5 years old within 2 years of increasing ITN use from 0 to 50-70% [3-8]. Scaling up ITN cover