MALARIA IN NIGERIA - A REVISIT

The frequency of asymptomatic malaria parasitaemia was investigated in rural and urban school-children aged six to 12 years in southwestern Nigeria between January 1987 and October 1988. Asymptomatic parasitaemia as detected in the rural school-children all year round with the lowest parasite rate in January and the highest in July, corresponding to the mid-dry and wet seasons respectively. Asymptomatic parasitaemia was also common amongst urban school-children, but the frequency was lower than in the rural children. Parasite density was ≤ 1000 μl-1 in 42% of parasite-positive asymptomatic children and was > 10 000 μl-1 in only 20% of them. Mass treatment with chloroquine, to which the parasites were fully sensitive, was followed by the same rate of re-infection in the parasite-positive and parasite-negative groups. Of 7713 patients clinically diagnosed as having malaria 4425 were found to have parasitologically-proven malaria, and of these 4239 had pure Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Of the patients with falciparum malaria only 4.6% were below the age of one year. In 47% the parasite count was ≤ 1000 μl-1, and it was over 10 000 μl-1 1n 37% and over 250 000 μl-1 in 16%. There was no significant difference between the asymptomatic children and the acutely ill patients in the percentage with parasite densities ≤ 1000 μl-1, but the percentage with parasite densities > 10 000 μl-1 was significantly greater in the acute malaria patients than in those with asymptomatic parasitaemia.