Geographical Reconnaissance of Household in Northern Nigeria towards Optimizing Indoor Residual Spraying Method for Malaria Elimination

Abstract

As a part of an effort to roll back malaria in Nigeria, exploring the use of geographically related tools triggered the use of modern approaches of knowing the spatial distribution of target populations to attain significant malaria elimination intervention. GIS tool was used for geographical reconnaissance (GR), providing demographic data on respondents’ household and spatial information on the distribution of households in the selected location. A cross-sectional study design was used to collect spatial data in the two locations, while a quantitative questionnaire was used to collect the household data. The analysis of field data indicated that 49,500 unique households were enumerated and thus included in the Indoor Residual Spraying to prevent malaria infection, covering 424 towns in the two Local Government Areas (LGAs). 383,301 persons were recorded during the GR exercise in Doma and Nassarawa Eggon LGAs out of which 79,339 were children of agesless than five years, with 13,526 pregnant women. Further data analysis revealed that the average number of persons per household in both LGAs was approximately eight. The spatial information from the GR provides a foundation for an updateable database for any future survey for developmental activities in Nigeria. The use of modern GR approach has proved to be accurate, reliable and more cost effective and less cumbersome than the traditional approach in the collection and geo-positioning of household data. Use of Garmin e-Trex GPS handheld instruments to collect household data in the designated areas removed the constraints of expensive Personal Digital Assistants and reduced errors of wrong location coordinates. Several African countries which did not use GR or applied the use of Geospatial tool appropriately had setbacks. The previous study in other countries showed limitations which was characterized by substantial inherent logistical and technical challenges culminating in missed targets. This setback was addressed in our study.