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Reach of the Commercial Sector 217

TABLE 9-3 NetMark Household Survey Results
Household Indicators 2000 2004 2008
Awareness of ITNs 6% 59% 100%
Households owning any bed net (treated or untreated) 10 26 29
Households owning an ITN 0 7 20

Urban households owning an ITN 0 5 23
Rural households owning an ITN 0 8 18
Pregnant women sleeping under a net the previous night 6 15 14
Pregnant women sleeping under an ITN the previous night 0 4 10
Child under 5 sleeping under a net the previous night 8 10 13
Child under 5 sleeping under an ITN the previous night 0 2 9

the largest investor in ITN promotion in Nigeria over that period, starting with
its media launch in 2002. During this time, the commercial partners increased
their brand marketing each year, and other organizations occasionally pro-
moted ITN use. As usual, the actual use of nets and ITNs lagged behind aware-
ness; however, ITN use steadily increased over this period. While the use of ITNs
by pregnant women and children has registered significant increases, overall net
use has not increased at the same pace, indicating that many of the ITN users are
those who used to sleep under an untreated net. NetMark’s baseline research
had shown that Nigerians were more negative about using nets compared to
people in other NetMark countries. Given the size of Nigeria’s population and
the fact that it has grown by 23 million since 2000, more resources need to be
applied to ITN promotion. NetMark’s resources were very modest compared to
the target population.

R E A C H O F THE C O MMER C I A L S E C TO R

The data did show that the commercial sector played a powerful role in making
nets available to consumers: in 2004, 80% of respondents reported that they got
their nets or ITNs from a commercial outlet. Obviously, the commercial sector
was the main source of the nets owned by households in every economic quin-
tile (see Figure 9-2).