Intestinal parasitic infections are very severe among school aged children in the urban slums, thus regular mass de-worming programs, health education, and the provision of safe drinking water is recommended to combat IPIs among the school aged children.

No abstract

Malariometric surveys generate data on malaria epidemiology and dynamics of transmission necessary for planning and monitoring of control activities. This study determined the prevalence of malaria and the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) towards malaria infection in Ibeshe, a coastal community. The study took place during the dry season in 10 villages of Ibeshe. All the participants were screened for malaria. A semistructured questionnaire was used to capture sociodemographic data and KAP towards malaria. A total of 1489 participants with a mean age of 26.7 ± 20.0 years took part in the study. Malaria prevalence was 14.7% (95% CI 13.0–16.6%) with geometric mean density of 285 parasites/μL. Over 97% of participants were asymptomatic. Only 40 (2.7%) of the participants were febrile, while 227 (18.1%) were anemic. Almost all the participants (95.8%) identified mosquito bite as a cause of malaria, although multiple agents were associated with the cause of malaria. The commonest symptoms associated with malaria were hot body (89.9%) and headache (84.9%). Window nets (77.0%) were preferred to LLIN (29.6%). Malaria is mesoendemic in Ibeshe during the dry season. The participants had good knowledge of symptoms of malaria; however, there were a lot of misconceptions on the cause of malaria.

The observation of limited diversity of malaria parasites may imply that the use of antigenic markers as genotyping tools for distinguishing recrudescence and re-infections with P. falciparum during drug trials is subjective.

Malaria and COVID-19, though caused by different organisms, share a significant number of symptoms like fever, headaches, difficulty in breathing and fatigue. Therefore, determining if a patient is positive for COVID-19 or Malaria based on symptoms alone, might be misleading, especially during pandemic response. It has been reported that an individual begins to manifest Malaria symptoms between 10 -15 days after infection with malaria parasite, although some individuals may be asymptomatic. Some COVID-19 infected patients, like Malaria, are also asymptomatic but could contribute to transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus. These similarities in symptoms have led to misconception about COVID-19 being real and misdiagnoses of both infections, especially in Nigeria. However, there are possibilities that Malaria and COVID-19 could co-exist in some individuals thereby leading to mismanagement and treatment of only one infection while neglecting the possibility of the patient being infected with both diseases. We aim to determine possible correlation between Malaria and COVID-19 in a Malaria endemic country like Nigeria. This study was carried out using the qPCR molecular testing approach, a gold standard for COVID-19 testing and rapid diagnostic test kits to detect Malaria parasites in 617 individuals residing in urban settings. We demonstrated that COVID-19 and Malaria infection amongst adults in urban settings are unrelated thereby focusing on symptoms alone may result in misdiagnosis. Our findings show that Malaria