Status and Risk Factors Associated with Urinary Schistosomiasis among the Primary School Children in Some Communities of Shinkafi Local Government Area, Zamfara State, Nigeria

Abstract

Urinary schistosomiasis among the primary school children remain among the major public health problems that affect cognitive domain of the pupils. The present research was conducted to investigate the status and risk factors associated with urinary schistosomiasis among the community primary schools children in Shinkafi local government area of Zamfara State Nigeria. Four risk factors (Haematuria, source of water for domestic used, river visit and purpose of river visit) were considered to be associated with urinary schistosomiasis infection in the study area; four community primary schools were selected, 400 pupils were recruited for this study, each selected student was asked to produce terminal end urine in a screw cap universal sample bottle, the samples were analyzed with combi_10 reagent strips and then examined microscopically after filtration to count the number of Schistosoma eggs/10 mils of urine. One hundred and seventy three 173 pupils were found positive which gave the prevalence of 43.1%, higher significant infections was observed among the pupils that are using river (70.0%) as their source of drinking water; those that visit river (52.5%) and those that said fishing is their purpose of river visit (70.6%). The infection was not significant with regard to presence of haematuria in the urine samples. Pupils who used river as their source of drinking water had more than 2x likelihood of been infected than those that used other source of drinking water, those that visit rivers had more than 14x likelihood of having infection than those whose did not visit river, pupils who visited the river for fishing are 22.60 times likelihood of developing the infection than the pupils who visited the river for some other reasons. Conclusively, source of drinking water, river visit and purpose of river visits are the potential risk factor that increased likelihood of higher infection among the pupils in the study area.