Soil-Transmitted Helminths: Parasite load and viability amidst mass drug administration in Ibadan, Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

Presently, the operational strategies for the control of Soil-Transmitted Helminths (STHs) has been via Mass Drug Administration (MDA) which primarily targets school and pre-school age children, child-bearing age women, including adults with high-risk occupations. Therefore, this study was done to relate the frequency of drug usage by the host to the intensity and viability of STH ova in the faecal samples collected in 11 study areas (Alakia, Akanran, Molete, Aleshinloye, Iwo Road, Eleyele, Bodija, Moniya, Olodo, Omi Adio and Podo) within Ibadan methropolis. A total of 1100 faecal samples were collected from voluntary participants between January and December 2018 and a standard Kato-Katz techniques was used for diagnosis. Well-structured questionnaire to acquire data on the demographics and usage of drug against STH infections was administered to each of the consenting participants. SPSS version 21 was used to analyze the data; ANOVA at p< 0.05. Faecal samples (35.9%) had one species of parasite minimally. Ascaris had the highest prevalence of 41.6%, followed by 24.5%, 23.5% and 10.4% for Trichuris, hookworm and Strongyloides species respectively. The parasite specific prevalence varied significantly (p≤0.05). Bodija had the highest frequency of drug usage with the least viability (6.1%) and intensity (5.4%). There is a negative correlation between frequency of drug usage and intensity (r= -0.39) and viability (r= -0.35) across the sampling locations. The STH infection prevalence observed could be attributed to poor environmental sanitation, poor personal hygiene arising from several factors such as lack of adequate sanitary facilities and other associated risk in the study locations. The decrease in viability and intensity of STH with respect to level of MDA drug usage might be significant to anticipated effectiveness and eventual success of MDA programmes in Ibadan environs.