47. Malaria burden in human population of Khanozai, Pakistan
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Abstract
This study was designed to assess and report the frequency of malaria infection in human population of Khanozai, district Pishin a rural area of Balochistan province, Pakistan. The objective of this study was to compare the infection frequency of malarial parasite species causing malaria fever, to detect incidence in different genders and to determine the possible effect of seasonal variation of temperature on malarial incidence. We enrolled total of 958 individuals with clinical symptoms of malaria in this study. Blood samples from these individuals were collected and Rapid immunoassay and microscopic examination was employed to detect malarial infection. Out of 958 blood samples 115 (12.00%) were found positive for malarial parasites. The incidence of Plasmodium falciparum was 03 (2.6%) and that of Plasmodium vivax 112 (97.3%) while no case of Plasmodium malariae and Plasmodium ovale was detected. We observed higher incidence of 79 (8.24%) in males as compare to females 36 (3.75%) in relation to total number of samples. This makes 68.69 % infections in male while 31.31 % in females of total positive samples. The incidence of malaria fever increases from colder month of January up to relatively warmer month of June and decreases afterwards. In this study, we observed malarial incidence even in relatively colder Khanozai area. Male were more vulnerable to the malarial incidence probably due to more exposure to malarial vector. While as expected the incidence increase with increase of temperature throughout the year.
Keywords: Immunoassay; Malaria; Pishin; Plasmodium