Assessment of Caregiver Preferences for Malaria Prevention Strategies

Background: Malaria remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide among children under five. Effective prevention strategies remain crucial, but their implementation faces various challenges, notably the choice of the method of malaria prevention. Objective: This study aimed to elicit the preferences for malaria prevention among caregivers of children under five years. Method: A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was designed and administered to 250 caregivers at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Gombe, Nigeria. Six attributes were identified from relevant studies. Each participant was presented with two (2) choice sets, from which they selected one, while a Chi-square test was employed to estimate the preference parameters and willingness to pay for the malaria vaccine. A p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant at a 95% confidence interval. Data were analysed using John's Macintosh Project software (JMP) version 18.0. Results: Marginal utility estimates indicated that the caregivers preferred malaria vaccine (0.34) over chemoprophylaxis tablets (-0.34) (p=0.0001, X²=67.21), with community pharmacy (0.12) being the favoured location compared to home (0.10) or clinic (-0.22) (p=0.0001, X²=26.03). The most important attribute was 90% efficacy (1.15, p=0.0001, X²=863.46) and a waiting time of 20 minutes (0.25, p=0.0001, X²=45.52). Participants were willing to pay $0.33 more for vaccination at a community pharmacy compared to vaccination at home. Conclusion: This study found community pharmacy as the preferred location for vaccination, and efficacy to be the most important study attribute for vaccine preferences. Insights from this study can inform malaria vaccine implementation programs