Haematological Parameters of Malaria Infected Patients in the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar, Nigeria

Copyright: © 2014 Francis U, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Malaria is a blood disease caused by the bite of Anopheles mosquito. Malaria causes the death of more than one million in Africa every year. Ten percent (10%) of death in children aged below three years are estimated to be from malaria in some parts of the tropical regions. In Sub-Sahara Africa including Nigeria, it is a major public health problem, hence this study to control and discriminate between these infections for possible early diagnosis. The study was conducted to statistically analyze hematological parameters including packed cells volume (PCV), total and differential white blood cells count (WBC), platelet count and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) of malaria infected patients in the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Calabar. The method adopted made use of 140 samples collected from seventy (70) apparently healthy individuals (controls). The other seventy (70) were malaria parasite positive patients. De-haemoglobinized Giemsa-stained thick blood film examination was carried out on both the patients and controls. Standard techniques were used to determine their hematological parameters. The results were analysed using student t-test and indicated significant difference in the hematological parameters between the malaria infected and non-infected subjects (p<0.05). The mean values of hematological parameters of malari