Active case detection survey of malaria cases in Surat City: a field based study.

Infectious diseases are still persisting as a major health problem in India in spite of having national programmes for the control of most of these diseases for almost half a century now. One of the major problems, which we are still facing, is that of malaria. Malaria kills more than one million people each year in the world, especially children1. In India, there were approximately 1.1 million positive cases reported in the year 20002. The economic burden is also extremely high, accounting for a reduction of 1.3% in the annual economic growth rate of countries where malaria is endemic3. In India, Surat City is considered as one of the major metropolitan cities. Because of the major movement of the population in this city malaria continues to be a public health problem. There are urban health centres and mobile units of Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) which are providing free laboratory services. The improvement of malaria work in Surat over several years is due to the vigilant and dedicated work by SMC. Extensive and intensive antimalarial activities carried out by the Corporation have been instrumental in this achievement. Various antimalarial activities carried out by the Corporation are as follows: case detection, vector control activities, human resource development, spreading IEC (information, education & communication) and legal implementation. One of the major functions of SMC as mentioned above is the active case detection (ACD) of malaria cases which is done through houseto-house survey by malaria workers. The workers visit the area once in 15 days. Main responsibility of the malaria workers is to find a fever case in the last 15 days in the family, collect slide if a fever case is found and provide radical treatment through follow-up visits. There are 200 such workers working in different parts of the Surat City. The present study was done with the aim of finding fever cases through ACD, study their treatment seeking behaviour and assess whether the malaria services provided by the malaria workers are being utilised or not by the general public.