High prevalence of asymptomatic plasmodium infection in a suburb of Aba town, Nigeria

Background: Malaria is endemic in many parts of the world. Various strategies have been planned to control malaria from time to time in many places. Whatever may be the strategy the prevalence of symptomatic and asymptomatic plasmodium parasitaemics has been of prime importance as useful parameter for its control. It is hoped that malaria control programme in Nigeria will benefit from prevalence of parasitaemic study such as this. Method: Ndiegoro flood disaster district was selected by stratified random sampling from 16 districts of ward 3 out of 12 wards in Aba South Local Government out of the 2 Local Governments of Aba Town. About three quarters of the houses were uninhabited as they were submerged at various depths of the selected district. The population who consented for the study was 257. Thick and thin blood films were studied by light microscopy for plasmodium parasitaemia. Results: The prevalence of plasmodium parasitaemics in the 257 studied population was very high (45.1%). The asymptomatic parasitaemics were about three times as many as symptomatic parasitaemics (73.2% and 26.7% respectively). This difference is statistically significant (