Figure 1.
Selected malaria indicators from Tanzania Demographic and Health Surveys (1999, 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2011).
Malaria intervention coverage rates have only recently increased. Greater household ownership of ITNs, ITN use among children under 5, and the proportion of children receiving artemisinin combination therapy (ACT) treatment in Tanzania started in 2004, surpassing 50% coverage only in 2010. Source: Tanzania Demographic and Health Surveys 1999, 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2011.
Table 1.
Child malaria incidence and mosquito numbers collected per household.
Figure 2.
Proportion of households with concrete walls and iron roofs over time (1975–2008).
A historical account of housing improvements was collected by asking respondents for the type of roofs and walls that their housing unit was made of at the time of different life events: when they were first married, when they had their first child, when they had their last child, and at the time of survey. These dates are used to calculate the cumulative density of houses that have attained iron roofs (instead of thatched roofs) and concrete walls (replacing mud walls) since 1975. Whereas the proportion of houses with iron roofs or concrete walls was nearly zero prior to 1985, by 2008, nearly 80% and 40% of houses have these materials, respectively. These trends correspond with increasing national gross domestic product per capita in the country. Notes: GDP per capita (US$2000) obtained from World Bank Indicators.
Table 2.
Housing index component measures across quintiles.
Figure 3.
Slide positivity rate by housing index quintile.
The incidence of malaria decreases as the housing quality index increases (Figure 3). In particular, incidence among children residing in the lowest three quintiles was over two to three times higher than among those residing in the highest quality quintile, and this was consistent across rural and urban areas.
Figure 4.
Total number of indoor mosquitoes vectors collected per household (mean of three occasions) by selected house quality indicators.
There does not appear to be a consistent or gradient relationship between house quality and the mean mosquito numbers across urban and rural areas. In urban areas, the highest quality houses in quintile 5 had a median of zero vectors, and vectors were mainly comprised only of female A gambiae. In contrast, in rural areas, vector numbers were a mix of A. gambiae and funestus, and generally decreased as house quality increased, except for houses in quintile 4. More vectors were collected in houses with cattle nearby.
Table 3.
Risk factors for malaria incidence among children.
Table 4.
Risk factors for the mean total number of indoor vectors per household collected over three occasions.