Research Article Assessment of Risk Factors Associated with Malaria Transmission in Tubu Village, Northern Botswana Elijah Chirebvu, 1 Moses John Chimbari, 2 and Barbara Ntombi Ngwenya 2 1 Okavango Research Institute, University of Botswana, Private Bag 285, Maun, Botswana 2 College of Health Sciences, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Howard Campus, Durban 4000, South Africa Correspondence should be addressed to Elijah Chirebvu; chirebvuelijah@gmail.com Received 4 December 2013; Accepted 7 February 2014; Published 16 March 2014 Academic Editor: Polrat Wilairatana Copyright © 2014 Elijah Chirebvu et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. his study investigated potential risk factors associated with malaria transmission in Tubu village, Okavango subdistrict, a malaria endemic area in northern Botswana. Data was derived from a census questionnaire survey, participatory rural appraisal workshop, ield observations, and mosquito surveys. History of malaria episodes was associated with several factors: household income (< 0.05), late outdoor activities (OR = 7.016; CI = 1.786–27.559), time spent outdoors ( = 0.051), travel outside study area (OR = 2.70; CI = 1.004–7.260), nonpossession of insecticide treated nets (OR = 0.892; CI = 0.797–0.998), hut/house structure (OR = 11.781; CI = 3.868–35.885), and homestead location from water bodies ( < 0.05). No associations were established between history of malaria episodes and the following factors: being a farmer ( > 0.05) and number of nets possessed ( > 0.05). Eave size was not associated with mosquito bites ( > 0.05), frequency of mosquito bites ( > 0.05), and time of mosquito bites ( > 0.05). Possession of nets was very high (94.7%). Close proximity of a health facility and low vegetation cover were added advantages. Some of the identiied risk factors are important for developing efective control and elimination strategies involving the community, with limited resources. 1. Introduction Understanding how and why vector-borne diseases like malaria remain a persistent problem despite being tools for diagnosis and treatment is essential for developing efective control measures for sub-Saharan Africa. Temperature is one of the key climatic variables that determine the range of malaria transmission and hence global warming is likely to result in an increase in malaria prone areas especially where temperatures have generally been lower than the optimal range of 25–27 ∘ C for mosquito development [1]. Furthermore degradation of the environment and social and economic pressures due to population growth may boost the expansion of malaria prone areas [2]. Population migrations, drug and pesticide resistance, and deterioration of health service delivery systems will also inluence the level of malaria transmission [3]. he epidemiology of malaria is very complex, involv- ing factors pertaining to the malaria parasites, the insect vectors, the human hosts, and the environment [4]. An understanding of the link between malaria transmission, climatic variables, and other human related factors is there- fore necessary for developing appropriate measures that will signiicantly reduce transmission and perhaps eliminate malaria in endemic areas. In most cases these human related risk factors are known to aggravate the extent of climate related problems. he level of risk to human populations living in malaria endemic areas varies markedly across continents and also within countries and diferent areas within the same coun- tries. Several studies have shown that malaria vector distri- bution, transmission rates, and incidence can vary widely over short distances, between neighbouring villages and even within a single settlement, as a result of small area variations in risk factors [5, 6]. Identiication and understanding of this variation are important in the detection of high risk groups and for selective targeting of intervention [7]. Many studies have attempted to identify household and individual level factors associated with malaria. Some of the factors studied include access to health facilities [8], type Hindawi Publishing Corporation Malaria Research and Treatment Volume 2014, Article ID 403069, 10 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/403069