Prevalence of Congenital Malaria and Neonatal Outcome in Maternal Malaria in a Tertiary Care Centre

BACKGROUND: Malaria is one of the major public health problems. Pregnant women are at increased risk of being affected from malaria. The non-immune primigravida are more at risk of getting infected. Malaria in pregnancy poses significant morbidity to both the mother and the neonate. There are various studies conducted in countries like Africa to study the effects of malaria in pregnancy. We proposed this study to determine the prevalence of congenital malaria and to know the adverse fetal outcome in placental malaria. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: 1. To determine the prevalence of congenital malaria in a cohort of pregnant women who underwent delivery in our tertiary care centre. 2. To assess the neonatal outcome in maternal malaria. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cohort of 190 pregnant women who underwent delivery in Government R.S.R.M Lying-in hospital was included for this cross sectional study from January 2016 to August 2016. Samples were obtained from mother’s peripheral blood, placenta and the newborn at the time of delivery. Diagnoses of malarial parasites in the samples were based on peripheral smear examination and Rapid diagnostic test. RESULTS: Among 150 samples from the placenta, 15 samples (7.9%) were positive for malarial parasites. Among 15 positive cases, 10 cases (66.7%) were primigravida, which was higher than 4 cases (27%) by gravid 2 and 1 case (6.7%) by gravid 4. Of the 190 newborn delivered, 119 cases (62.6%) were term babies, 38 cases (20%) were term SGA babies and 33 cases (17.4%) were preterm babies. Among the 15 positive cases, 3 (1.6%) were term babies, 5 cases (2.6%) were term SGA babies and 7 (3.7%) were preterm babies. The mean birth weight of the positive cases were 2175 gms which was 475 gms less than the mean birth weight (2650 gms) of negative cases and was statistically significant CONCLUSION: Placental malaria is associated with maternal anemia, low birth weight and prematurity. However there is no prevalence of congenital malaria in our region