Applied Microbiology

Biography

Biography: Sammy C K Tay

Abstract

Malaria and HIV are two of the most common infections in sub-Saharan Africa and, to a lesser extent, in other developing countries. The determination of malaria and HIV co-infection rate is important because there are hypotheses and even study reports on the possible association between the two infections. This study was therefore carried out at Holy Family Hospital – Techiman between November 2011 and January 2012 with the main objective of determine the prevalence of malaria among HIV sero-positive patients attending anti-retroviral treatment clinic of the hospital. The study design was cross sectional, restricted to randomly selected HIV sero-positive patients attending anti-retroviral treatment clinic of the hospital. All participants were sampled using participant leaflet and consent forms. A total of 400 HIV sero-positive patients between aged1year 8months and 73 years were included in the study. Of these 292 (73%) were females and the rest 108 (27%) were males. A questionnaire was administered and 2 ml of venous blood sample was drowned for detection of malaria parasite, estimation of CD4 count and haemoglobin level. The study revealed that 47 (11.75%) patients were slide positive for malaria parasite. There was no statistically significant difference in the prevalence rate for females (12.1%) and males (10.2%), P=0.6047. Using the World Health Organization (WHO) definition for anemia as hemoglobin levels less than 13.0g/dl in adult men and hemoglobin levels less than 12.0g/dl in adult women, an overall prevalence of 67% (268 out of 400) anemia was observed in this study. The prevalence of anemia among the study participants who had malaria was 93.6% (44 out of 47). All patients studied had a CD4 cell count ranging from 3 – 1604 Cells/µl. The mean CD4 cell count of the patients was 386.2 (±274.3) cells/µl. All patients with malaria infection had CD4 cell count ranging from 3 cells/µl to 512 cells/µl with mean CD4 cell count of 186.33 (±133.49) cells/µl. Out of the study participants, 377 (participants above 15 years) were interviewed on knowledge on malaria transmission and prevention in which 328 (87.0%) out of 377 of the participants claimed they had knowledge about malaria infection. Only 32 (8.5%) of the interviewed 377 of the participants interviewed used bed net for the prevention of malaria. Due to high mortality rates associated with malaria infection in an endemic area, it may be necessary that routine malaria screening be adopted as part of the management policy to check HIV and malaria co-infection since only tuberculosis (TB) and hepatitis B virus are presently screen for.