SOURCE:

Faculty: Biosences
Department: Parasitology And Entomology

CONTRIBUTORS:

NZELUM, V.N
ENEANYA, C.I

ABSTRACT:

Malaria parasites are the microorganisms that belong to the genus Plasmodium and usually transmitted by the bite of a female Anopheles mosquito. The association of malaria infection, incidence and anaemia was studied over a 12 months period amongst pre-school children in Aguata L.G.A, Anambra state. A total of 450 children between the ages of 1–5 years were studied. A multi-stage process was adopted to select 6 out of 13 communities and 20 out of 37 primary schools with nursery/crèche sections. Microscopy was used to determine malaria parasite in the blood. PCV was used to test for anaemia and assay for haemoglobin. A cohort of children was monitored every one month to measure the episodes of malaria and an auxillary temperature was obtained by a simple clinical thermometer. Statistical analysis was done by using MS excel 2013 and imported into SPSS packages version 10 with significant difference set at P<0.05. Malaria prevalence in the community was found to be 47.3% and 96.7% for anaemia. Females had higher malaria prevalence (53.5%) than males (46.5%); the difference in infection rate between the sexes was statistically significant (P=0.0001). In age-specific prevalence of malaria parasite, the ages 3-5 years had higher malaria infection 63.9% than the ages 1-2 years (36.2%) and statistically there was significant difference in malaria infection amongst children (P = 0.000595). For sex-specific prevalence of anaemia, females 97.5% showed higher percentage than the males 94.2%. The age group1-2 years (96.8%) had higher anaemic condition than the ages 3-5years (96.7%) but the higher age group 3-5 years showed greater severity and difference in anaemic conditions at P = 0.898. The ranges of mean Hb for the sexes; 1-2 years and 3-5 years were 7-12g/dl indicating that the range of Hb in both sex and age groups were the same. Sex and age did not affect the level of anaemia in children. The mean Hb did not differ between sex and age 1-5 years. Association between malaria infection and level of anaemia showed significant difference P = 0.000. In contributory risk of malaria to anaemia, malaria has a positive correlation with anaemia. Prevalence of malaria was highest in the month of July (47.3%) with females showing higher prevalence (25.6%) than males (24.8%) P>0.05. Monthly prevalence of malaria infection by age showed that malaria was highest for 3 years 832(184.9%) old. The prevalence for 1 year old did not exceed 2.5%. There was a drop among the 5 years old when compared with 2, 3 and 4 year olds. The prevalence of malaria infection among the children over a 12 months record in Aguata was recorded for the month of July (44.9%) while the least was in December (30.8%). An average number of malaria episodes per child in relation to age were 4 times in all ages per year and a slightly higher number (5) was recorded for ages 3 and age 5 respectively. In terms of episodes in relation to sex, males have higher number of episodes (5) than the females (4) and these episodes occur on bimonthly basis. In association between body temperature and malaria parasites, malaria is associated with high body temperature. The contributory risk of malaria to temperature indicted that the children with body temperature range > 37oC was 63.05 times more associated with positive cases of malaria than those with body temperature range < 37oC. Therefore malaria infection has a positive correlation with high body temperature. The pre-school children age 1-5 years in endemic regions such as the study area are prone to constant malaria attack due to their low level of immunity, therefore antimalaria drugs should be administered to them on monthly basis.