| Summary: | Background & objectives: Malaria presents a huge health and economic burden to families living in malariaendemic areas. The use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) is one of the global strategies in decreasing the malariaburden on vulnerable populations. The use of ITNs reduces clinical malaria by over 50% and all cause mortalityin children by 15–30% when the overall population coverage is >70%. This study was aimed at establishing thelevel of household insecticide-treated bednet ownership and utilization in Rivers State, Nigeria before a statewide scale-up distribution campaign.Study design: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was carried out in the Rivers State in November 2008 amonghousehold heads or their proxies to serve as a pre-intervention baseline for the scale-up distribution of insecticidetreated bednets in the state. The households were selected by a multi-staged sampling technique: first stagebeing the selection of Local Government Areas (LGAs) from Senatorial districts, second stage the selection ofcommunities from LGAs and final stage the selection of households. Data were collected using a questionnaireadapted from the WHO/FMoH and analyzed using the Epi-Info version 6.04d statistical software package.Hypothesis tests were conducted to compare summary statistics at 95% significance level.Results: A total of 811 household heads or their proxies were interviewed. Their age ranged between 20 and 70yr, with a mean of 47.96 ± 4.39 yr. The study showed that although 552 (68.1%) of the households ownedbednets, only 245 (30.2%, 95% CI=27.1–33.5) of them owned long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs). Similarly,only 37.2% of those who owned ITNs slept under them the night preceding the survey.Conclusion: Household ITN ownership and utilization were low in the state. Incorporating behavour changecommunication package as part of the ITN distribution intervention is advocated to increase ITNs utilization inthe state.
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