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 $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.

Conclusion: WTP for ITN retreatment exists. The difficulty lies in implementing this. One possibility would be a community-based ITN retreatment programme.