Indoor Residual Spraying Coverage and Acceptability Rates to Control Malaria and the Householder's Reasons of Acceptance or Rejection of Spraying, in South-East of Iran

Indoor residual spraying (IRS), as one of the malaria control techniques, requires high spraying coverage and acceptance rate by householders, to be effective..
The main aim of the study was to assess the spraying acceptability and coverage rates in relation to acceptance and rejection reasons of the IRS program. Also, the householders’ perception about IRS benefits and satisfaction with the malaria prevention and knowledge of transmission pathways were estimated..
A cross-sectional survey was performed in endemic districts of Sistan-and Baluchistan province (south-east of Iran), in two years of 2013 and 2014. Data were collected by a validated questionnaire, through interviewing 834 household heads that were randomly selected from 40 villages, of four malarial sub-districts. To analyze the data, chi-squire test was performed, by using SPSS software (Version 18). The significance level was set at P ≤ 0.05..
A total of 834 households’ heads were interviewed, with the mean age of 39.5 ± 15.4 years, 73.3% males and 26.7% females. The main sources of information, concerning IRS, were health care workers (51.4%). The IRS coverage and acceptance rates were 96.5% and 94%, respectively. Of the total number of participants, 95.3% of householders associated the disease transmission with mosquito bites and reported the use of insecticidal bed nets (90%) and IRS (74.1%), as important ways of malaria prevention..
The study showed that IRS coverage and acceptance rates were relatively high, which is essential in reaching malaria elimination. The information on malaria transmission and knowledge prevention measures showed that householders were, to a certain extent, familiar with the malaria control activities conducted by the health care service..