Castration coverage and attitudes towards a castration program in Lilongwe, Malawi
The aim of this study was to measure the castration coverage and the attitudes among people towards castration in an area in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, where a castration program has been running for a few years. Another aim was to review the literature to examine the link between castration coverage and rabies prevalence. Two areas (Area 25 and Area 23) in Lilongwe were studied through standardized household interviews. In Area 25, a non-governmental organization had been castrating dogs weekly to twice weekly for free for 3 years. In Area 23, no official organization had done castrations, and this area therefore acted as a control in the study. In each area, 200 households were interviewed. In both areas, the castration coverage was found to be quite low; 22% and 28% of the adult dogs included in the study was castrated in Area 25 and 23, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference in castration coverage between the areas (p = 0.44). However, attitudes towards castrations of dogs seemed to be more positive in Area 25 than in Area 23. This difference was found to be statistically significant (p=