Cost of Malaria Treatment, Knowledge and Preventive Measure Practices among Undergraduate Students in the University of Ibadan, Nigeria

Malaria is a disease with public health concern and high economic burden in endemic areas. This study assessed the cost of malaria treatment for undergraduate students and university management as well as knowledge of malaria and preventive measures adopted by the students. This study was both retrospective and prospective. Retrospective involved estimating cost of treating malaria for undergraduate students by the university management (provider’s perspective) between May and October 2017. The prospective phase involved use of pre-test structured questionnaire to assess respondents’ frequency of malaria infection, knowledge on malaria and preventive measures. Data was entered into SPSS version 20 and analysed. The total prescriptions retrieved was 15,931 of which 22.7% contained antimalarial. The cost of malaria treatment to the university management was estimated to be ₦9,224,900/USD28,827.80 (mean = ₦2,553.20 ± 1,894.60/USD7.98 ± 5.92) for the 6 months studied. A total of 487 respondents were involved in the prospective study. Mean age of respondents was 20.8 ± 2.5 years old. An average of ₦2,209.10 ± 2,436.90 (USD73.60 ± 7.6) was spent by the students for treatment of malaria out-of-pocket (OOP) by those who sought treatment outside the University Health Service (UHS) centre. The use of insecticide treated net (ITN) was significantly common among females who also had lower incidence of malaria compared to males. Majority (68.9%) of participants had at least one episode of malaria in the last 6 months before the study. The economic burden of malaria to the university and the students is huge and this can be reduced if the students improved on the use of preventive measures against malaria.