Prevalence and Distribution of Human Plasmodium Infection in Bannu, Khyber Pakhtunkhawa Pakistan

Abstract

Malaria is a vector borne disease of old world that is regaining epidemic situation in many countries of the world including Pakistan. P. vivax and P. falciparum major are the most frequent causative agents of malaria in Pakistan. The objective of the current study was to investigate the prevalence of malaria in District Bannu. In the previous two years (2016-2017), a total of 193419 of blood films were examined microscopically in different Health Care Center. An estimated of 1258516 population living in Bannu is at risk of contracting malaria at making it the leading public health problem. The temporal analysis of malaria data could be important to evaluate the performance of malaria prevention programs. The present study based upon the recorded data of 193419 malarial patients registered in 2016-2017. Chi square and Inverse Distance weighting model (IDW) were used to analyze the data. In 2018 a total of 500 blood samples were collected from malaria suspected patients. Microscopy and nested-PCR were used for detection of species of Plasmodium causing human malaria. The following patient data were retrieved from laboratory registration logbook for analysis; sex, age, residence, blood film (BF) microscopy result, type of malaria parasite identified, year and month when the patients visited Health Care Centers. Among the total 28700 microscopically confirmed cases 50.8% were males and 49.1% were females. The overall prevalence of malaria was 16.43% annual parasite incidence in 2016 was 1.32% and in 2017 was 0.9%. The two species of malaria parasite identified were P. falciparum 3.8% and P. vivax 95.05%. Mix infection 1.10% was also found in the study area. Relatively higher proportions of cases were documented in the months of August, September and October respectively. Similarly, patients in the age group above >14 were more likely to be infected than individuals 5-14 and <5, as 61.64%, 27.7% and 22.05 respectively. The PCR result showed that out of 500 samples 281 were positive through microscopy and 315 samples were positive through PCR. Negative samples confirmed through microscopy were 219 samples and through PCR 185 samples. The current study showed that P. vivax is the most prevalent species in District Bannu.