Prevalence of malaria infection amongst students of a southwest Nigerian federal university

One of the dreadful parasitic infection that ravages the lives of the very young and old in Sub-Saharan Africa is Malaria. It is a serious public health problem. Although interventions to curtail and curb it prevalence at various tiers of government local, state and federal were enforced, however, such strategy is not well disposed of in the citadel of learning –university amongst the students This form the basis of the objective of the study and why it is conducted.

Method: We examined the prevalence of malaria infection among students of the Federal university of Technology, Akure. Nigeria. Blood samples were collected from 300 patients between April 2019 to September 2019. Aged between 15 -30 years that visited the Medical centre with complaints and symptoms ranging from headache, body pains, undulating high temperature, nausea and vomiting abdominal cramps etc. Antimalarial drugs were not administered until outcome of laboratory result is available within a short while.

Result: A total number of three hundred (300) subjects were screened for malaria infection 183 (61%) were male while 117 (39%) were female. The number of individuals with malaria infection were 242 (80.6%) of the 300 subjects screened for malaria.

Conclusion: The prevalence rate of students infected with malaria parasitaemia is 80.6% of the student populace screened in the university under the study which indicated a high rate of prevalence of malaria. lt is therefore exigent to execute strategic interventions through health education in form of seminars/ workshop for the students and ways of prevention and elimination of the vector – anopheles mosquito in the environment.