Current status of malaria parasite among blood donors in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria

O Joe-Cliff,AE Abah

doi:10.4314/jasem.v20i1.22

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

Introduction

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)

MATERIALS AND METHODS

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Conclusion