Edutainment and infographics for schistosomiasis health education in Ndumo area, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

Educational interventions targeting communities which are at risk of contracting schistosomiasis infection may empower them to develop capacity to minimize the spread of the disease. We compared the effectiveness of health education interventions for schistosomiasis knowledge uptake among school-going children in Ndumo area, KwaZulu-Natal using a quasi-experimental trial. An assessment of health education interventions (edutainment and infographics) in the community’s own language and socio-cultural context was done among primary school-aged children in two primary schools in Ndumo, a schistosomiasis endemic area (37%). The study involved 37 students from Munywana primary where the intervention was on infographics and 44 from Maphindela where the intervention was on edutainment. The students wrote a schistosomiasis knowledge test, 1 month before the knowledge uptake interventions were implemented. The same test was given to the two groups after the interventions. Baseline and post-intervention scores were used to test whether the interventions improved schistosomiasis knowledge levels. Paired t-test and independent t-tests were conducted to test the change in knowledge assimilation at the 5% significance level. Our findings show that health education interventions significantly improved knowledge on schistosomiasis among school children (P