health-congress-2017-scientifictracks-abstracts

6 / 18

Page 25
Notes:
conferenceseries.com
Volume 5, Issue 4 (Suppl) Occup Med Health Aff
ISSN: 2329-6879 OMHA, an open access journal Health Congress 2017
October 16-17, 2017
October 16-17, 2017 Dubai, UAE
12th World Congress on
Industrial Health, Healthcare and Medical Tourism
Prevalence of intestinal parasitic infections and their associations with anthropometric measurements
of school children in selected primary schools of Wukro Town, Eastern Tigray, Ethiopia
Eleni Kidane
Ethiopia Public Health Institute, Ethiopia
The present study was to determine prevalence of intestinal parasitic infections and their associations with anthropometric
measurements among school children of Wukro town, Eastern Tigray, Ethiopia. The design of the study was a cross-
sectional epidemiological investigation involving a sample population of 384 school children from grade one to grade eight
in two purposively selected primary schools located in Wukro town during March-May 2011/2012. A total of 384 fresh stool
samples of school-children were examined using direct wet-mount technique. The overall prevalence of intestinal parasitic
infection was 60.7% (58.2% in males and 62.8% in females). Multiple infections with two and above parasites were found in
7.5% (29) of the positive stool samples. The prevalence of protozoan parasites, E. histolytica, G. lamblia and I. beli was 23.2%,
16.9% and 4.4%, respectively. Similarly, the prevalence of helminth infections, A. lumbricoides, Hookworm, T. trichiura, S.
mansoni, E. vermicularis, H. nana and Teania saginata was 5.7%, 3.9%, 3.1%, 3.1%, 1.3%, 1% and 0.8%, respectively. The
prevalence of intestinal parasitic infections was significantly associated with some of risk factors, such as family size, source of
water and its handling and availability of latrines (p=0.000, p=0.003 and p=0.001, respectively). Even though there were high
parasitic infections, they were not statistically associated with some socio-demographic factors, such as parents educational
level, personal hygiene, life skills, awareness to parasitic infections, residence and wearing shoe or not. A significant association
was found between intestinal parasitic infections and underweight students (p=0.002). Underweight school-children (34.6%)
had a higher prevalence of parasitic infection as compared with other anthropometric indices (wasting and stunting). In
summary, intestinal parasitic protozoan infections represent a public health problem in the school-children of Wukro town.
Local health sector and any concerned bodies should collaborate with school health program for delivering health education
to increase the knowledge, attitude and practice of school children as to how transmission of intestinal parasitic infection is
prevented such as improvement of personal hygiene and environmental sanitation and shoe wearing habit.
Biography
Eleni Kidane has completed BEd degree in Biology from Dire Dawa University in 2009. She has then joined the School of Graduate Studies of Haramaya University
to pursue MSc in Applied Biology and completed in 2012. Presently she is an Associate Researcher at Ethiopia Public Health Institute.
Eleni Kidane, Occup Med Health Aff 2017, 5:4 (Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2329-6879-C1-037