The study was designed to determine the true prevalence of congenital, cord, and placental malaria in General Hospital Minna, North Central Nigeria. Peripheral blood smears of near-term pregnant women, as well as the placental, cord, and peripheral blood smears of their newborn babies, were examined for malaria parasites, using the Giemsa staining technique. Out of 152 pregnant women screened, 21 (13.82%) of them were infected with malaria parasites. Of the 152 new born babies, 4 (2.63%) showed positive peripheral parasitaemia. Placental parasitaemia was 7/152 (4.61%), while cord blood parasitaemia was 9/152 (5.92%). There were strong associations between peripheral and cord malaria parasitaemia and congenital malaria (P < 0.05). Plasmodium falciparum occurred in all, and none had mixed infection. The average birth weights of the babies delivered of nonmalarious pregnant women were higher than those delivered by malarious pregnant women, though not significant (P > 0.05). Malaria parasitaemia occurred more frequently in primigravidae than multigravidae.

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The global impact of malaria has spurred interest in developing prompt and accurate diagnostic strategies to provide an effective management of the disease. The aim of this study was to compare rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) for malaria with routine microscopy. Samples were collected randomly from 364 febrile out-patients with clinical suspicion of malaria from four hospitals in North Central Nigeria. Results from the rapid diagnostic kits were analysed and compared to those obtained by general microscopy. Of the 364 out-patients involved in the study, 218 (59.89%) tested positive for <em>Plasmodium falciparum</em> by RDTs, whereas 263 (72.256%) tested positive by microscopy. There are significant differences (P&lt;0.05) in infection rates between RDT and microscopy. The sensitivity, specificity and negative predictive values of RDTs compared to microscopy are low, while the positive predictive value is high. Evaluation of RDTs against the parasite-positive panel with parasite densities of &lt;1000 parasites/μL, between 1000-5000 parasites/μL and above 5000 parasites/ μL was 11.73, 30.61, 57.65% for RDTs compared to 6.11, 27.95 and 65.94% for microscopy, respectively. Test line intensity increases with increase in parasite densities for both methods.