Prevalence of Malaria in a Study Population in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Symptomatic Manifestations and Public Health Implications

A Questionnaire based study was conducted at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria on the nature of symptoms observed in patients who were presumptively treated for malaria based on observed symptoms from which analysis was done on the occurrences of each of these symptoms. Then, the prevalence of malaria infection was investigated through data collection at the same hospital. These sets of data collected was centred on patients who attended the hospital (UMTH) between January, 2011 to December, 2011. The age of the patients ranged from 1 to 90 years. Results from questionnaire completed by the medical personnel at the hospital indicated that vomiting had the highest occurrence at 100%. Other symptoms such as fever, headache, joint pain and nausea ranked next to vomiting in occurrence with figures of between 64.7% and 94.1%, while symptoms such as jaundice, loss of consciousness, weight loss, arthralfia, bleeding, pyrexia, cough, backache, and reduced uterine output were the least in occurrence at between 5.9% and 11.8%. Apparently, symptoms such as Bleeding, jaundice, reduced uterine output are associated with pathologies of malaria parasites which appear to be flourishing in proliferation and are ferried to other parts of the body by the blood, where they are establishing new sites of more pronounced damages to host tissues (blood cells and other systemic related cells) associated with the related pathologies and emergence of these symptoms. It is suggested that treatment for patients should take into cognizance the most occurring symptoms, the reasons for this trend and incorporation certain drugs or slight adjustments of spectrum of drugs to accommodate effective management of this issue; while the skewed peak transmission season seem to indicate increased level malaria control steps during these period. A total of 271 of these individuals were examined by laboratory technicians through a method that involved blood smear making, appropriate staining of slides and examination of the blood smears for the presence of malaria parasites. Male patients recorded malaria parasite prevalence of 43.9% while for female patients it was 56.1%. This %prevalence difference based on gender does not appear significant. Peak malaria prevalence was recorded in the month of September and followed by June (15.58% and 14.02% respectively) while the value was least for March followed by November (2.21% and 3.69% respectively). This is indicative of skewness of most of the peak related values in the rainy season compared to the dry season. The sahel savannah related long stretch of dry climatic conditions of this area which provide breeding conditions during the rainy seasons is likely to be one of the contributors to this observation, alongside other human malariogenic and environmental factors which favour increased breeding of the mosquito vector