malaria chemoprophylaxis for travelers: the knowledge of physicians in the state of qatar, 2017

Introduction: malaria is among the most significant travel-related infections encountered by travelers to endemic countries in terms of morbidity and mortality. in qatar, imported malaria has increased over the last 5 years; 493 travel-related cases were confirmed in 2016. in the current study, the knowledge of malaria chemoprophylaxis among physicians in the state of qatar was assessed. methods: this was a cross-sectional study conducted during a national travel health workshop at the ministry of public health, qatar. physicians participating in the workshop from different national healthcare institutions providing travel medicine services were invited to voluntarily complete a self-administered, structured questionnaire. results: forty-two medical doctors participated in the study (92 response rate). based on their specialty, almost two-thirds (64.3%) of the participants were family medicine physicians, and one-fifth (21.43%) were general practitioners. furthermore, most of the doctors were untrained in travel medicine. the majority of participants demonstrated a good knowledge of the malaria parasite (100%), plasmodium species (64.3%), incidence (83.3%), transmission (66.7%), and drug-resistance (95.2%) of malaria. additionally, most physicians (>90) were knowledgeable about the major features of severe or complicated malaria as well as malaria prevention and chemoprophylaxis. conclusion: this study highlights several areas of good knowledge on travel-related malaria prophylaxis and prevention among the study participants; however, there are still a few knowledge gaps that require mitigation. continuing training programs on malaria prevention in travelers will sustain this good level of knowledge among physicians and improve the quality of pre-travel advice provided by travel medicine practitioners in qatar.