Prevalence of Malaria Parasitaemia among Pregnant Women Attending Three Selected Health Centers in Ideato South Local Government Area, Imo State

This a community based study of prevalence of malaria parasitaemia in pregnancy carried out in three selected health centres in Idea to south LGA of Imo state. A simple random sampling technique was used to select the areas of study as well as the 120 participants used for the study. A checklist was used to collect the socio-demographic data of the subjects within the age range of 16-40years. Venous blood sample of the subjects were collected from the subjects and examined for presence of malaria parasites using standard procedures of haemoglobin and packed cell volume. Seventy-eight (66.7%) tested positive to malaria parasite with the highest prevalence occurring in the third trimester (79.2%). Also, the distribution of occurrence in different gravidity groups observed the highest prevalence occurrence amongst the primigravidae (71.0%), followed by secundigravidae (63.2%) and multigravidae (40.0%). The result shows reduction in both the PCV and HB levels of the pregnant women indicating anaemia especially in their third trimester. The chi-square statistics indicated that there is a significant relationship between age and malaria parasitaemia among pregnant women, (x 2 =1.84, df=4, p =0.05). The null hypothesis was therefore rejected at 0.05 alpha level.