Efficacy of applying self-assessment of larviciding operation, Chabahar, Iran

• Published in: Malaria Journal
• Main Authors: Ranjbar Mansour, Gorgij Khodadad, Mohammadi Mahdi, Haghdoost Ali, Ansari-Moghaddam Alireza, Nikpour Fatemeh, Salehi Masoud, Sakeni Mohammad, Hasanzahi Abdolghafar, Olanratmanee Phanthip, Kittayapong Pattamaporn
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2012
• Subjects: Malaria; Larviciding; Self-assessment; Action research; Monitoring; Evaluation; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Infectious and parasitic diseases; RC109-216; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-11-329; https://doaj.org/article/a27dd06a1ec64c648d76c6cb0d8da272

Abstract Background Appropriate supervision, along with availability of an effective system for monitoring and evaluation, is a crucial requirement to guarantee sufficient coverage and quality of malaria vector control procedures. This study evaluated the efficacy of self-assessment practice as a possible innovative method towards achieving high coverage and excellent quality of larviciding operation in Iran. Methods The research was conducted on the randomly selected rural health centre of Kanmbel Soliman with 10 staff and 30 villages, in three main steps: (i) assessment of effectiveness of larviciding operations in the study areas before intervention through external assessment by a research team; (ii) self-assessment of larviciding operations (intervention) by staff every quarter for three rounds; and, (iii) determining the effectiveness of applying self-assessment of larviciding operations in the study areas. Two toolkits were used for self-assessment and external evaluation. The impact of self-assessment of larviciding operations was measured by two indicators: percentage of missed breeding habitats and cleaned breeding habitats among randomly selected breeding sites. Moreover, the correlation coefficients were measured between self-assessment measures and scores from external evaluation. The correlation coefficient and Mann Whitney test were used to analyse data. Results Following the utilization of self-assessment, the percentage of missed breeding habitats decreased significantly from 14.23% to 1.91% (P <0.001). Additionally, the percentage of cleaned breeding habitats among randomly selected breeding sites increased from 66.89% to 95.28% (P <0.001). The external evaluation also showed significant effects of self-assessment in performance of vector control; the maximum effect of intervention were seen in an action plan for monitoring and evaluation of larviciding operations at field level, geographical reconnaissance for the registration of breeding habitats and worker skills related to ...