Eliciting Perceptions on Malaria Using Photovoice in Endemic Communities in Palawan,Philippines

Malaria being place-specific disease is  endemic in Palawan, Philippines, The disease  was once ranked as one of the leading causes of morbidity in the country.  Photovoice,  a participatory Action Research strategy  developed by Wang and Burris in 1994 was used to elicit  social risk perceptions on malaria. There  were  two  groups of 5 adult male  participants per group. Each of  the participant was  loaned a  camera  for   a period  of  1 week and were instructed  to  take pictures that  can suggest  answer to the question, How  does  one  get  sick of malaria? The participants   were  then  gathered  for focus  group  discussion to  share their perceptions on risk factors associated  with malaria using  the photos taken by the participants. The common perceptions as a possible cause of malaria are drinking water contaminated with mosquito eggs and larva.  It was  found that perceptions on causes of malaria were not widely varied  and have hardly changed over time. Despitethe intervention efforts and increasing biomedical knowledge on diseases, folk beliefs such as pasma ( diseases related to abrupt  change in temperaturature  as in weather conditions) and pilay  (broken limbs) tend to be persistent. There is an evident need for health professionals to be more innovative and creative in communicating  health education messages on the prevention and control of malaria to address underlying perceptions and rectify erroneous notions of illness causation.