Abstract
BackgroundMalaria remains a major cause of febrile illness in Nigeria and interventions to reduce malaria burden in Nigeria focus on the use of insecticide-treated nets. This study determined the prevalence of malaria parasitaemia and the use of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) for the control of malaria amongst under-five year old children in Calabar, Nigeria.MethodsA total of 270 under-5 year old children were recruited and structured questionnaires were used to obtain information on the background characteristics of the respondents from their caregivers. Capillary blood samples were collected from each of the patients through finger-pricking and tested for malaria parasites by Rapid Diagnostic Test and microscopy.ResultsAn overall parasitaemia prevalence of 32.2 % (by Rapid diagnostic test kit [RDT]) and 40.1 % (by microscopy) were obtained in this study. Forty-six (45.5 %) of the febrile patients had malaria parasitaemia (by RDT) or 41 (59.4 %) by microscopy. One hundred and fifty (55.6 %) of the caregivers acknowledged the use of nets on doors and windows for malaria prevention and control. One hundred and thirty-nine (51.5 %) mentioned sleeping under mosquito net while 138 (51.1 %) acknowledged the use of insecticide sprays. Although 191 (71.5 %) of the households possessed at least one mosquito net, only 25.4 % of the under-5 children slept under any net the night before the survey. No statistically significant reduction in malaria parasitaemia was observed with the use of mosquito nets among the under-5 children. Almost all the respondents (97.8 %) identified mosquito bite as the cause of malaria. Fever was identified by the majority of the respondents (92.2 %) as the most common symptom of malaria.ConclusionsThe findings of the study showed high prevalence of parasitaemia and that fever was significantly associated with malaria parasitaemia. Mosquito net utilization among the under-fives was low despite high net ownership rate by households. Therefore, for effective control of malaria, public health education should focus on enlightening the caregivers on signs/symptoms of both uncomplicated and complicated malaria as well as encourage the use of ITNs especially among the under-fives.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12879-016-1459-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Malaria remains a major cause of febrile illness in Nigeria and interventions to reduce malaria burden in Nigeria focus on the use of insecticide-treated nets
The proportion of febrile patients that had parasitaemia by rapid diagnostic test (RDT) was 55.4 % while that by microscopy was 61.2 % (p < 0.05). This malaria prevalence of 40.1 % was higher than 12 % reported in Tanzania [14] and 6 % reported in Pakistan [15] and lower than 53.8 % reported in a relatively similar study in Nigeria [12]
A parasitaemia prevalence of 40.1 % obtained in this study can still be seen to be high considering recent scale up in malaria prevention campaigns in the area
Summary
Malaria remains a major cause of febrile illness in Nigeria and interventions to reduce malaria burden in Nigeria focus on the use of insecticide-treated nets. According to World malaria report, an estimated 3.3 billion people were at risk of malaria in 2010. Of this total, 1.2 billion were at high risk (>1 case per 1000 population), 47 % of them were living in Africa while 37 % came from South-East Asia [3]. There were an estimated 655,000 malaria deaths in 2010 of which 91.0 % occurred in the African Region, and 86.0 % of the deaths involved children under the age of five years [3]. Malaria is caused by five different species of Plasmodium parasites and transmitted by female Anopheles mosquito [4]. Dominant vector species are Anopheles gambiaes. l. and the Anopheles funestus group with some other groups playing a minor role [5]
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