Polyparasitic infections in school children of equatorial guinea

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of an epidemiological survey to determine the prevalence of polyparasitism in the intestine of nursery, primary, and secondary school pupils in Anisok District of Wele-Nzas Provence, Equatorial Guinea. A total of 1,276(98%) out of 1,302 pupils whose faecalsamples were examined were infected with various species of different parasites. The main parasites included .Ascaris lumbricoides (40.3%), Trichuris trlchiura (39.5%), Entamoeba histolytica (8.8%), Ancylostoma duodenalis (4.1%), while other parasites, which constituted (11.3%) werehookworm, Giardia lamblia, Heterophytes heterophytes, Strongyloides stercoralis, Hymenolepis nana, Schistosoma species, Diphylobotrium latum, Taenia species, Enterobius vermicularis, Balalantidium coli, Fasciola species, Hymenolepis diminuta and Paragonimus westermani. Overallparasitism was high and mixed infection among both sexes had an incidence of 83.13%. The difference infection rates among males and females for Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, and Entamoeba histolytica was very negligible. Nevertheless, more females were infected with Taenia specie (83.0%) than males. Male stool samples showed a high infection rate for Ancylostoma duodenalis (60.7%), Hookworm (64.9%), Giardia (lamblia) intestinalis (65.2%), and Heterophytes heterophytes (66.7%) than the females In general, the result showed no significant difference (p>0.05) in the infection rate and parasite distribution pattern between the sexes examined. However, infection ratio and parasites distribution were highly significant (p