Abstract
Background:
Malaria affects the health and wealth of individuals, as well as nations. In Ethiopia, malaria is identified as both a disease of poverty and a cause of poverty.Objectives:
A retrospective analysis was conducted to investigate the changes in malaria indices at the Serbo Health Center, Ethiopia.Materials and Methods:
Based on existing blood smear examination data. The original case records were carefully reviewed, analyzed and interpreted.Results:
Among the total of 51610 blood smear examinations, 26602 were found to be positive and contributed to 51.5% of the diagnostic yield. All of the 51610 cases were treated at the Serbo Health Center. Males constituted a total of 56.1% participants in this study (14934/26602 cases) and they were found to be more prone to having a positive malaria smear. Chi-square analysis showed a statistically significant association between male patients and the incidence of malaria (P = 0.0001; ?2 = 212.5; df = 4). Plasmodium falciparum contributes to about 62.4% of malaria cases followed by P vivax (37.3%).Conclusions:
There is an urgent need for active health education campaigns and the administration of front-line vector control interventions such as the consistent deployment of insecticide-treated bed-nets and indoor residual spraying to interrupt disease transmission and an eventual reduction in the number of malaria cases.Keywords
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© 2012, Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.