Abstract
This study was carried out to determine the prevalence of malaria parasite among blood donors at the Police Clinic Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. The standard parasitological techniques using both thick and thin blood films from the donors for the detection of malaria parasite was followed. Venous blood was collected from 200 blood donors and films were made on clean greese-free glass slide and stained with 10%Giemsa stains and viewed under the microscope using the oil immersion objective. Of the 200 samples examined, 56 (28.00%) were positive with Plasmodium falciparium. The highest prevalence among the males 53(26.50%) and between the ages 21-30years and only 3 (1.50%) of females were positive. Donors having the blood group O were more infected (60.70%) than the other blood groups and the lowest was blood group AB (5.40%). This result shows that there is a relatively high prevalence of malaria parasite among the blood donors in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. It is, therefore, recommended that malaria parasite screening test be included among other blood screening tests before any transfusion to avert the deleterious effects of malaria on recipients. © JASEMKeywords: Malaria parasite; Prevalence; Blood Donors; Port Harcourt; Rivers State.
Highlights
The transmission of malaria parasites by blood transfusion has been one of the first reported incidents of transfusion-transmitted infections (Kitchen and Chiodini, 2006).The administration of Blood is a lifesaving procedure and has greatly increased over the years
The international policies recommended that blood for transfusion should be screened for transfusion- transmitted infections, but more often, malaria screening is not performed in most malariaendemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa (OwusuOfori et al, 2010)
Blood group O was the dominant blood group found in the study and most parasitized (60.7%) while blood group AB was the least and the least parasitized (5.4%).Table 3 showed Plasmodium falciparum infections among various blood groups
Summary
The transmission of malaria parasites by blood transfusion has been one of the first reported incidents of transfusion-transmitted infections (Kitchen and Chiodini, 2006).The administration of Blood is a lifesaving procedure and has greatly increased over the years. The international policies recommended that blood for transfusion should be screened for transfusion- transmitted infections, but more often, malaria screening is not performed in most malariaendemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa (OwusuOfori et al, 2010). This is despite the World Health Organizations’ recommendation that all donated blood should be tested for malaria where appropriate and possible (WHO, 2009). Tests have been developed to detect Plasmodium antiboides and these are used for selected blood donors in various blood centres They use tests to detect Plasmodium antigens and nucleic acid amplification testing (NAT) for parasitic DNA (Reesink et al, 2010).Prevalence of transfusion –transmitted malaria varies from 0.6% to above 50% in sub-Saharan Africa (Owusu-Ofori et al, 2013). ABO blood groups were determined by agglutination as adopted from Cheesbrough (2005)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental Management
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
