Prevalence of Malaria among Patients Attending Public Health Facilities in Maputo City, Mozambique

Abstract

Abstract. We conducted a health facility-based survey to estimate the prevalence of malaria among febrile patients at health facilities (HFs) in Maputo City. Patients answered a questionnaire on malaria risk factors and underwent malaria testing. A malaria case was defined as a positive result for malaria by microscopy in a patient with fever or history of fever in the previous 24 hours. Among 706 patients with complete information, 111 (15.7%) cases were identified: 105 were positive for Plasmodium falciparum only, two for Plasmodium ovale only, and four for both P. falciparum and P. ovale . Fever documented at study enrollment, age ≥ 5 years, rural HF, and travel outside Maputo City were statistically significantly associated with malaria by multivariate analysis. We found a high prevalence of laboratory-confirmed malaria among febrile patients in Maputo City. Further studies are needed to relate these findings with mosquito density to better support malaria prevention and control.

Prevalence of Malaria and Associated Factors in Dilla Town and the Surrounding Rural Areas, Gedeo Zone, Southern Ethiopia

“…This is similar to the study conducted in Maputo City, Mozambique with the higher prevalence rate in the rural areas [32].…”

“…According to Gedeo Zone Health office report, reduction of malaria, particularly for the last 3 years is shown [27]. The present result is consistent with the study conducted among patients attending public health facilities in Maputo City, Mozambique with 15.7% of prevalence [32]; result from Pakistan, Lal Qilla visited to health care center 17.3% [33] and from Hadhramout, Yemen [34] with 18.8%. This result was higher than reports from Kemisie, Ethiopia [35], Butajira, Ethiopia [36], Bangladesh [37], and Eritrea [38] with 5.3%, 0.93%, 3.97% and 2.2% respectively.…”

“…More so, participants whose house has not been sprayed with insecticide in the past 6 months are two times more likely to get malaria infection (OR=2.45, 95% CI: 2.20-3.99), p=0.02. This is similar with the study done in Maputo City, Mozambique [32]. Individuals having and using insecticide treated nets were 0.2 times less likely to get malaria parasites than those of not having adequate bed nets (OR=0.16, 95% CI: 0.08-0.29), (p<0.05).…”

High Levels of Asymptomatic and Subpatent Plasmodium falciparum Parasite Carriage at Health Facilities in an Area of Heterogeneous Malaria Transmission Intensity in the Kenyan Highlands

“…9,10,33 The results of this study indicate that health facility-derived serological, parasitological, and molecular measures can detect differences in transmission intensity at a small geographical scale and are sensitive to seasonal changes. These findings suggest that health facility surveys are able to provide a reasonable measure of community-level transmission, are capable of delineating areas of high or low malaria transmission and that the use of serology and PCR added useful information to assessment of transmission levels in the sampled populations that would have been missed if sampling focused solely on those cases suspected of having malaria.…”

“…8,9 Health facility surveys provide an operationally attractive method to estimate malaria prevalence in the wider catchment population, because the inclusion of all health facility attendees mitigates against some of the biases associated with passive case detection. 7,10 However, most health facility malaria surveys have relied on diagnosis by microscopy or RDT, both of which have a limited ability to detect parasitemia at low parasite densities. 8,11,12 The number of malaria infections detected through these surveys is, therefore, likely to have been substantially lower than would have been achieved using a more sensitive diagnostic approach, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR).…”