Objective: To assess the efficacy and applicability of questionnaires to determine schistosomiasis endemic areas in Zimbabwe.
Design: Cross sectional study.
Setting: Makonde District, Zimbabwe.
Subjects: Headmasters and children in Grades II to V of the 121 schools in the district.
Main outcome measures: Number of completed questionnaires that were returned. Ranking of the most important diseases among the school children.
Results: Completed questionnaires were received from 110 (90.9%) schools. Of the 110 headmasters, 55.4% ranked schistosomiasis < or = 4 as one of the priority diseases affecting their children most. In addition, 44.2% gave blood in urine < or = 4 as one of the most frequent symptoms among their school children while 63.6% wanted action to be taken to prevent schistosomiasis and/or blood in urine among the children. A total of 38.3% of the children from 37 schools admitted having suffered from schistosomiasis during the last month while 37.4% of the children from 35 schools claimed to have experienced blood in their urine during the same period of time. The teachers found a prevalence of 46.1% while the research team found that 44.9% children had blood in their urine.
Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrated that the questionnaire approach, besides the high diagnostic power, was the cheapest, costing only US$0.08 per child and 18 times cheaper than the filtration technique.