Abstract
BackgroundNumerous studies have been carried out on assessing the prevalence of intestinal parasites infections (IPIs) amongpreschool and school-age children in Ethiopia, but there is lack of study systematically gathered and analyzedinformation for policymakers. Therefore, the aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to provide a summary on prevalence, geographical distribution and trends of IPIs among preschool and school-age childrenin Ethiopia.MethodsThe search were carried out in Medline via PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, Web of Science, and Google Scholar from 1996to July2019 for studies describing prevalence of IPIs among preschooland school-age children. We conducted meta-regression to understand the trends and the source of heterogeneity and pooled the prevalence using ‘metaprop’ command using STATA software version 14.ResultsEighty-three(83) studies examining 56,786 fecal specimens were included. The prevalence of IPIs was 48%(95%CI: 42 to 53%) and showedsignificantly decreasing trends 17% (95% CI: 2.5 to 32%) for each consecutive 6 years) and was similar in males and females. The pooled prevalence in years 1997–2002, 2003–2008, 2009–2014 and > 2014 was 71% (95% CI: 57 to 86%), 42% (95% CI: 27 to 56%), 48% (95% CI: 40 to 56%) and 42% (95% CI: 34 to 49%), respectively. Poly-parasitism was observed in 16% (95% CI: 13 to 19%,) of the cases.ConclusionIntestinal parasite infections are highly prevalent among preschool and school-age children and well distributed across the regional states of Ethiopia. Southern and Amhara regional states carry the highest burden. We observed significant decreasing trends in prevalence of IPIs among preschool and school-ageEthiopian children over the last two decades. Therefore, this study is important to locate the geographical distribution and identified high risk areas that should be prioritized further interventions, which complement global efforts towards elimination of IPIs infections by 2020.
Highlights
Numerous studies have been carried out on assessing the prevalence of intestinal parasites infections (IPIs) amongpreschool and school-age children in Ethiopia, but there is lack of study systematically gathered and analyzedinformation for policymakers
Up on screening the articles, 99 articles were further excluded; 90 were irrelevant because they were not about preschool or school-age children, 6 studies were about sensitivity and specify of diagnosis of IPIs, 3 articles were review articles
We detected no significance difference in geographical distribution as shown Fig. 7a.The results of the analyses showed that age and year of publication might be sources of heterogeneity, Fig. 2 Begg’s funnel plot and Egger test for heterogeneityof intestinal parasite infections among Ethiopian children region as shown in Figs. 3 and 4
Summary
Numerous studies have been carried out on assessing the prevalence of intestinal parasites infections (IPIs) amongpreschool and school-age children in Ethiopia, but there is lack of study systematically gathered and analyzedinformation for policymakers. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to provide a summary on prevalence, geographical distribution and trends of IPIs among preschool and school-age childrenin Ethiopia. Parasitic infections caused by intestinal helminths and protozoan are among the most prevalent infections in developing countries carrying high burden of morbidity and mortality in these areas [1]. Epidemiological evidence suggests that an estimated over one billion people in the world, majorly children were infected with intestinal parasites caused by helminths and protozoa [3]. More than 267 million preschool-age children and 568 million school-age children live in areas where these parasites are intensively transmitted [6]. Cryptosporidium species, Entamoeba histolytica and Giardia duodenalis were the most common protozoan infections in children under 5 years in sub-Saharan Africa [7]
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