Socio-economic factors associated with malaria in a tribal area of Orissa, India.

Study on the socio-economic factors and human behaviour in a cross-section of tribal communities in Sundargarh district, Orissa revealed that poor socioeconomic status and socio-cultural factors play important role in maintaining high degree of malaria transmission. Human behaviour such as location of hamlets, type of housing, sleeping habits, outdoor activities after dusk, poor knowledge about the disease and treatment seeking behaviour are of great significance as determinants of malaria transmission. All these factors need to be considered before planning community health programme. Estimation of economic loss due to malaria showed an average loss of 8.96 mandays per malaria patient with an average loss of 3.84 mandays to other family members. Mean total loss per malaria episode comes to Rs.334.91. The study showed that malaria is one of the major disease affecting the tribals to the greatest extent and putting a lot of burden on the economic upliftment of these communities.