Child Malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa: Effective Control and Prevention Require a Health Promotion Approach

Malaria remains a vital concern of child survival in sub-Saharan Africa despite the existence of effective curative and preventive measures. It is known that child malaria is underpinned by factors such as socioeconomic, cultural, environmental, and so forth, that must be considered simultaneously in order to effectively control it. This study applied to a rural community in Benin (West Africa) the Health Promotion concept (community participation and empowerment, contextualism, intersectorality, multistrategy, equity, and sustainability) to develop a program in order to control child malaria and close the gap of unsuccessful programs. The study design was a quasi-experimental pre-post conducted over a period of 27 months. As results, 80% of the community members participated in six of the seven sub-projects planned. The prevalence of fever (malaria) was significantly reduced after the intervention (p = 0.008). The recourse to adequate health care has significantly increased after the intervention (chi2 = 48.07, p = 0.000000). All these contributed to a statistically significant reduction of children deaths due to malaria (p = 0.001) in the village. Health Promotion strategies are likely to contribute to sustainable malaria programs' implementation that reduce malaria incidence and deaths in children under five.