Prevalence of Malaria Parasitaemia among Pregnant Women Attending Three Selected Health Centers in Ideato South Local Government Area, Imo State

Abstract

This a community based study of prevalence of malaria parasitaemia in pregnancy carried out in three selected health centres in Idea to south LGA of Imo state. A simple random sampling technique was used to select the areas of study as well as the 120 participants used for the study. A checklist was used to collect the socio–demographic data of the subjects within the age range of 16–40years. Venous blood sample of the subjects were collected from the subjects and examined for presence of malaria parasites using standard procedures of haemoglobin and packed cell volume. Seventy–eight (66.7%) tested positive to malaria parasite with the highest prevalence occurring in the third trimester (79.2%). Also, the distribution of occurrence in different gravidity groups observed the highest prevalence occurrence amongst the primigravidae (71.0%), followed by secundigravidae (63.2%) and multigravidae (40.0%). The result shows reduction in both the PCV and HB levels of the pregnant women indicating anaemia especially in their third trimester. The chi–square statistics indicated that there is a significant relationship between age and malaria parasitaemia among pregnant women, (x2=1.84, df=4, p =0.05). The null hypothesis was therefore rejected at 0.05 alpha level;