Prevalence of Malaria and Treatment Seeking Behaviours among Pregnant Women in Postconflict Internally Displaced Persons' Camps in Gulu District

Abstract

Background. Malaria is a serious health problem that contributes greatly to morbidity and mortality in Uganda. It mainly affects pregnant women and children under 5 years of age. Malaria accounts for 9-14% of inpatient deaths in public and private not-forprofit health facilities in Uganda. Methods. A cross-sectional study using quantitative data collection technique was carried out in Gulu district IDP camps. Proportion to size cluster sampling method was used to determine the numbers of pregnant women to be interviewed per IDP camp. We interviewed 769 pregnant women from 20 IDP camps using consecutive sampling methods by moving to the next nearest household. Results. 372(49%) of respondents indicated that they had suffered from malaria in the past two months. 348(94%) respondents got treatment for malaria. 299(86%) sought treatment from a health facility, 35 (10%) sought treatment from clinic, and 14(4%) sought treatment from drug shops. Factors associated with treatment seeking were experience of miscarriage (χ 2 = 3.87, P value = 0.049) and antenatal visit (χ 2 = 4.71, P value = 0.029). Conclusion. The prevalence of malaria was high among the respondents at about half. Majority of the respondents sought treatment from health facilities while a few of them sought treatment for malaria from clinic and drug shop. Pregnant women should be advised to seek treatment whenever they have malaria from health facility to ensure that the treatment given is appropriate. BackgroundMalaria during pregnancy is a major public health problem in tropical and subtropical regions throughout the world [1,2]. Malaria causes serious illness and death amongst children and pregnant women [3]. There are between 300 and 500 million malaria infections and 1 million malaria-attributed deaths worldwide each year [4,5]. The global malaria burden is not evenly distributed with Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for 90% of global malaria cases [6][7][8][9], and a majority of these cases occur among pregnant women and children [3,10]. Malaria adversely impacts on maternal health causing malaria-related anaemia [11,12] and accounts for 20% of all childhood deaths in Africa [13].In Uganda, malaria is a serious health problem that contributes greatly to morbidity and mortality. It mainly affects pregnant women and children under 5 years of age [14][15][16]. Malaria accounts for 25-40% of outpatient visits, 20% of inpatient admissions, and 9-14% of inpatient deaths in public and private not-for-profit health facilities. Malaria and malaria-related illnesses contribute to 20-23% of deaths among children aged less than five years [16]. Some of the reasons for this poor state included limited access to adequate treatment of malaria/fever, increasing resistance of malaria parasites to medicines, and incorrect and/or inadequate malaria treatment at home or within communities [16,17]. We therefore conducted a cross-sectional study by asking pregnant women verbally whether they have ever suffered from malaria during the past two months prior to the survey in ...

Haematological Profiles of Plasmodium-Induced Changes in Serum Amyloid-A levels among the Internally Displaced Persons in Maiduguri

“…The lifestyle and socio-economic wellbeing, lack of access to basic amenities in conjunction with the poor housing patterns of these displaced person, which may have made the displaced person vulnerable to mosquito bites. The high prevalence of 90.2% observed in this present study was many fold higher than 17% recorded by Charchuk, et al, [19] among internally displaced children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 49% reported by Henry, et al, [20] among pregnant women in internally displaced persons camp in Uganda, 78.5% recorded by Eze et al, [21] among Fulani pastoralist, 54.5% by Adefioye et al, [22] in Oshogbo, South-West, Nigeria. The observed higher prevalence could be due to the fact that the females experience the immune-suppression during pregnancy to accommodate the foetus, this immunological process lowers their immunity and pre-disposes them to several infection including malaria.…”