Willingness to pay for the retreatment of mosquito nets with insecticide in four communities of south-eastern Nigeria

OBJECTIVES To determine the willingness to pay (WTP) for the retreatment of insecticide-treated nets (ITN) in four malaria holoendemic communities of Nigeria. METHODS Contingent valuation method. The study tool was a pretested interviewer-administered questionnaire. Randomly selected households were the study units and household heads or their representatives were interviewed by locally trained interviewers. RESULTS Most households were willing to pay for annual ITN retreatment in all four communities. The proportion of those willing to pay ranged from 79% to 91%. WTP amounts ranged from from $0.05 to $5.26. The median from the aggregated data from the four communities was $0.21. Multivariate analysis showed that many explanatory variables were statistically significantly related to WTP for ITN retreatment. CONCULSION WTP for ITN retreatment exists. The difficulty lies in implementing this. One possibility would be a community-based ITN retreatment programme.