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. 2017 Jul 11;18(1):9.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-017-4565-4.

Involvement of Mitanins (female health volunteers) in active malaria surveillance, determinants and challenges in tribal populated malaria endemic villages of Chhattisgarh, India

Mehul Kumar Chourasia  1 , Kamaraju Raghavendra  2 , Rajendra Mohan Bhatt  3 , Dipak Kumar Swain  1 , G D P Dutta  3 , Immo Kleinschmidt  4
Affiliations

Involvement of Mitanins (female health volunteers) in active malaria surveillance, determinants and challenges in tribal populated malaria endemic villages of Chhattisgarh, India

Mehul Kumar Chourasia et al. BMC Public Health. .

Erratum in

  • Erratum to: BMC Public Health, Vol. 18.
    [No authors listed] [No authors listed] BMC Public Health. 2017 Sep 22;17(1):736. doi: 10.1186/s12889-017-4709-6. BMC Public Health. 2017. PMID: 28938882 Free PMC article. No abstract available.

Abstract

Background: Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), female health volunteers working at village level have become an integral component of National Health Mission (NHM) in India in the past two decades. Mitanin (meaning female friend in local dialect), a precursor of ASHA, play an indispensable role in early detection of health related problems and are helping in improving overall community health status in Chhattisgarh state. The current study was carried out to evaluate the feasibility of involving Mitanin in active malaria surveillance work in 80 tribal villages of Chhattisgarh and to explore the challenges and determinants to perform malaria surveillance activities by the Mitanins.

Methods: A total of 162 Mitanins were selected and divided into two age and village matched groups. The first group (training plus) of Mitanins were given additional training in malaria surveillance activities in whilst the second (standard) group received routine training. All Mitanins were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. In-depth interviews were also conducted among randomly selected sub groups of Mitanins (five from each group) after the completion of the quantitative survey. Performance of Mitanins was evaluated using pre-defined grading scores (A-E) which included various factors such as educational qualifications and knowledge about malaria, its signs and symptoms and knowledge, attitude and treatment practices.

Results: More number of Mitanins in training plus group has showed better performance (≥ B) than those in the standard group of Mitanins (80% vs 43.5%, p = 0.001) after adjusting for socio-demographic factors. Based on the outcome of in-depth interviews, Mitanin's lack of adequate support from supervisors, delayed payment of incentives and lack of appreciation were the major challenges mentioned.

Conclusion: Mitanins can play an effective role in active fever surveillance for malaria besides performing other health related tasks at sub-village level after focused education on malaria related activities and proper supervision.

Keywords: Active malaria surveillance; Asha; Chhattisgarh; India; Mitanin.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study purpose was explained in the local language to all study participants and study related queries were addressed. A written informed consent was collected from the study participants. This study was undertaken as a part of a WHO-coordinated multi-country project and ethical clearance was obtained from the Institutional Ethics Committee of National Institute of Malaria Research (ICMR), New Delhi, India (ECR/NIMR/EC/2010/75).

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interest.

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Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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