Assessment of Malaria Infection among Pregnant Women in Rimin Gado Local Government Area, Kano State

This study assessed malaria among pregnant women attending antenatal care in Rimin Gado Local Government Area (LGA) of Kano State. The study adopted mixed methods for data collection, where quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The research utilized two sources of data (primary and secondary data). The primary data include copies of a questionnaire distributed to 100 women available at antenatal care. The secondary data was obtained from records on the number of cases of malaria for all the pregnant women that attended antenatal care at Rimin Gado General Hospital, from 2013 to 2017. The data were analysed using Descriptive (Line graphs and frequency tables) and inferential statistics. In view of these, the following results were obtained: non-educated pregnant women had the highest prevalence rate (52%), while those with a tertiary level of education had the lowest (2.5%). The number of malaria cases was observed to decrease (from 25% to less than 8%) with age, and the number of children and pregnancy rate of pregnant women increased. There are variations between the type of occupation and malaria cases during pregnancy with unemployed, Traders, Civil servants, and others accounting for 12.5%, 40%, 0% and 47.5% respectively. The study shows that antenatal care has no significant effect on the decline of malaria cases during pregnancy as 95% of the infected women fully attend antenatal care while the remaining 5% are among those that partially attend antenatal care in all their pregnancy. The temporal variation of the number of cases of malaria during pregnancy varied significantly across the various months of the year in 2013, 2014, and 2015 while variations for the remaining years (2016 and 2017) have little significance. The study recommends enlightenment of pregnant women on the importance of, environmental sanitation, intermittent preventive treatment of malaria and the use of insecticide-treated nets during pregnancy