Effectiveness of medicine Malaria Off 200 as mass prophylaxis against Malaria in the high-risk villages of Shahdol, Madhya Pradesh

ABSTRACT

Background: Learning from the past experiences, the district health authority Shahdol has planned a mass-prophylactic activity with the Homeopathy Medicine (Malaria Off 200) in the selected high-risk villages (above 5 API) in the year 2016 Objective: The present paper reports the effectiveness of Malaria off 200 as mass-prophylactic drug in addition to routine antimalarial activities under NVBDCP in district Shahdol, Madhya pradesh in year 2016. Methodology: A Homeopathic drug Malaria Off 200 was used for the mass-prophylaxis of  Malaria in high malaria transmission season in selected 28 villages of district Shahdol. The effectiveness of the drug was ascertained as “Reduction of ≥20% villages, having more than 2 malaria case in six-month period (July-December 2016)in comparison to the previous year”. Result: Of the 28 villages, seven (25%) reported Malaria case  incidence equal to or less than two in six-month period (July-December 2016). In the same time period in previous year 23 (82%) villages reported Malaria case  incidence more than two. So, reduction of number of villages with 'biannual Malaria case  incidence’ rate was 57%. Conclusion: The short term finding validate the campaign as effective, as per the operational definition of effectiveness coined for the campaign. However, further time series studies with Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) is recommended for future.