Five Years Malaria Trend Analysis in Woreta Health Center, Northwest Ethiopia

Main Article Content

Awoke Derbie
Megbaru Alemu

Abstract

BACKGROUND: An estimated 68% of the Ethiopian population,living in 75% of the landmass, is at risk of contracting malaria atany time making it the leading public health problem. Thetemporal analysis of malaria data could be important to evaluatethe performance of malaria prevention programmes. Thus, the aimof this study was to determine the trend of malaria at WoretaHealth Center (WHC) over a period of five years.METHODS: We analyzed the records of 8,057 presumptivemalaria patients registered in 2012 to 2016. The following patientdata were retrieved from laboratory registration logbook foranalysis: sex, age, residence, blood film (BF) microscopy result,type of malaria parasite identified, year and month when thepatients visited WHC. Logistic regression was employed to assessthe association between potential associated factors and positiveBF result; p < 0.05 was considered significant.RESULTS: Among the total presumptive individuals, 4447(55.2%)were females. The prevalence of malaria in each year ranged from4.1% to 6.7%. The overall prevalence of malaria was 5.4% (95%CI:4.9%-5.9%). The two most important species of malaria parasiteidentified were P. falciparum at 233(53.7%) and P. vivax at184(42.4%). Relatively higher proportions of cases weredocumented in the months of November, December and June(11.1%, 8.1% and 7.2%, respectively). Patients who visited thehealth center in the month of December were >4 times more likelyto be infected as compared with those who came to the healthcenter in September [AOR: 4.2, 95%CI (2.374-7.560)]. Femaleswere 1.3 times more likely to be infected than males, [AOR: 1.3,95%CI (1.101-1.638)]. Similarly, patients in the age group above15 were 1.9 times more likely to be infected than individuals < 5,[AOR: 1.9 95%CI (1.498-2.455), p value 0.000].CONCLUSION: In the studied area, malaria remains a majorpublic health challenge. Hence, interventions to decrease theimpact of the disease have to be evaluated and strengthened.

Article Details

Section
Original Article
Author Biographies

Awoke Derbie, Bahir DarUniversity, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

Departmentof MedicalMicrobiology,

Immunology and Parasitology,

College of Medicine and Health Sciences

Megbaru Alemu, Bahir DarUniversity, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

Department of Medical
Microbiology, Immunology and
Parasitology, College of Medicine
and Health Sciences