Prevalence of Malaria among Febrile Patients attending Government Hospitals in Ondo State, South-West Nigeria

Abstract

Background: The use of malaria infection prevalence among febrile patients is a valuable epidemiological surveillance tool. In this study, a cross sectional study was conducted among febrile patients in selected government Hospitals in Ondo State for malaria prevalence. Results: Plasmodium falciparum is the only encountered malaria parasite with prevalence values of 82.72% (426/515) and 80.19% (413/515) were obtained for microscopy and RDTs respectively. The prevalence of malaria among the males (86.59%) was higher than the females (80.65%), all age groups in this study were vulnerable with highest infection rate of 89.66% among age group 11-20 years. The parasites densities ranged between 209 and 22310 parasites/μl with a mean parasitaemia of 5522.17 ± 183.30 parasites/μl. The prevalence of malaria among the febrile participants that have taken antimalarial drug before visiting the hospital is 82.94% (389/469) with the mean parasitaemia of 4615.21 ± 188.14 parasites/μl while among the participants that have taken herbs before visiting the hospital the prevalence is 85.03% (142/167) with the mean parasitaemia of 4913.81 ± 330.20 parasites/μl. Conclusion: There was high prevalence of malaria among febrile patients and this fi nding will help improve the diagnosis and treatment of other febrile (non-malaria) infections, limit antimalarial usage to only malaria parasite-based test true positives and serve as a guide to combat malaria drug resistance in the study area.