THE OCCURRENCE OF INTESTINAL PARASITES AMONG CHILDREN WITHIN SOUTH EASTERN NIGERIA

This study evaluates the Occurrence of Intestinal Parasites Among Children within South Eastern Nigeria (A Case Study of Abia, Imo and Ebonyi State). The study population consisted of pre-school and school children of ages between 1 to 15 years using a random sampling method. A questionnaire was administered to survey the pupil’s data such as age, type of toilet available, sex, hand washing habit, water sources, and occupation of parents or guardians. Children were provided with universal containers and requested to bring stool specimen on or before 8:00am in the morning. The specimens were appropriately labeled with identification numbers and placed in a cold box with ice packs, immediately after collection and transported to the microbiology laboratory of Abia State University. The Samples were immediately examined for visible haematuria and turbidity. Prevalence was calculated and expressed as percentage of positive cases over the number examined. Data from questionnaire were coded and ranked and analyzed using SPSS version 13.0. Chi-square was used to compare significant differences in prevalence between the states visited, male and female infection of the parasites, ages and risk factors. The results indicated that the age and gender distribution of 300 subjects revealed that there were more males 162 than females 138. Out of the 300 stool specimen, watery stool specimen were (46), semi formed (55), formed (164) and mucoid stool specimen (35) (Table 1). The intestinal parasites identified in stool specimen includes Hookworm (12.7%), Strongylodies stearcoralis (3.3), Ascaris lumbricoides (20.7%), Taenia sp. (2.7), Trichuris trichiura (1.7%), and Entamoeba histolytica (4.0%) (Table 2). The prevalence of intestinal parasites was 49.7% and higher infection was observed in males (60%) than in females (47%) (Table 3) helminthes were found more in formed stools specimens than in watery stool while cysts were more in watery specimens. (Table 4) The age group 6 to 10 years was the most affected (54.7%) while the age group 11 to 15 years was the least affected (43.2%) (Table 5) The highest infection rate of (68%) occurred in Ebonyi State (figure 2). The researchers concluded that intestinal parasitemia are common among preschool and school children in south east states of Nigeria. Males of the age group 6-10 were mostly affected. We therefore recommend reintroduction of health education and sanitary inspection in the south eastern states of Nigeria.