[Health personnel and population aspects of common experience with fever in sub-Saharan Africa].

In Sub-Saharan Africa fever is a common experience for the population and health care personnel. However widespread use of the term "malaria" by the population, paramedical personnel, physicians, etc. leads to the false impression of agreement among everyone despite the fact that it is applied to completely different concepts. Although the connection between malarial fever and mosquito bites is generally understood, it is often weak and unstable. Fever can be considered as a normal episode at some stages of pregnancy or childhood development. Fever may be attributed to mosquitoes but also to other environmental factors. The routine activities of health care personnel in frontline health facilities often makes it difficult to adapt practices to new guidelines. The relationship between malaria and mosquitoes is determined by a whole series of experiences and health messages that the population and health care workers must assimilate in the same way. In fact this relation is sometimes constructed and reconstructed based on a minimal understanding of medical categories. The meeting between the knowledge of the population, physicians, and paramedical population often depends on the smallest common denominator (fever = malaria) at the intersection of very different experiences.