Background: Local knowledge of the prevalence, burden and features of diseases as well as effective disease surveillance system to identifying population at risk are important at achieving malaria elimination of the National Malaria Strategic Plan (2014-2020). Methods: The study utilized a retrospective cross-sectional descriptive data collected from January to December, 2018 to determine the prevalence of malaria parasite infection and prevalent Plasmodium spp infection among different age groups and sexes among patients attending Federal Medical Centre, Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State,Nigeria . We analysed secondary data of hospital records of 5,645 feverish patients attending general out patients’ department and medical laboratory department at the study area. Blood samples from the patients were collected and examined using thin and thick-blood smear slides technique for the presence or absence of parasites. Stained slides were examined using two levels of examination by trained microscopists and WHO certified expert microscopists as validators. Results: The prevalence of malaria parasite in the study area was 17.1%. P.falciparum was the most prevalent species of malaria parasite (99.69%) among the positive cases in the study area, while P.malariae was identified in 3 of the positive slides representing 0.31% case. Malaria positivity was highest (52.49%) among children aged 0-10years. Test of association between malaria positivity and patients’ age was statistically significant (p<0.05). Among patients who tested positive to malaria parasite, more than half (53.37%) of them were females. Conclusion: Presence of Plasmodium malariae may be indicative of trans-border transmission of the disease due to the proximity of the study area to international border and thus calls for effective malaria parasite surveillance system and further inter boarder research.

Elimination of tuberculosis remains a public health menace, due to multidrug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, that are resistant to the first-line anti-tubercular drugs. Consequently, detection of resistant strains depends on early diagnosis. Intervention of molecular techniques is essential to reduce mortality and morbidity rates. This study aimed to detect katG and inhA gene mutations among rifampicin resistant strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Kebbi State. A cross-sectional study was conducted which covered all the five major health zones in Kebbi State. Two hundred and forty (240) acid fast bacilli confirmed sputum samples were recruited and subjected to Gene Xpert testing. Positive sputum samples were later subjected to Line Probe Assay technique. 14 sputum samples were resistant to rifampicin out of the 240 confirmed acid fast bacilli sputum samples while 226 were sensitive to rifampicin. Mutations were found at the frequency of 100% for katG gene (katG/S315T) in all the 14 rifampicin resistant samples (rpoB/S531L) at the different health zones in kebbi state using the line probe assay. The research has also detected inhA gene mutation at a frequency of 100% in all rifampicin resistant samples showing that mutation is associated with multi resistance to isoniazid and rifampicin. This study confirms that resistance due to katG and inhA mutation is a better surrogate of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis among TB patients in Kebbi State compared to the single-marker analysis. Hence, early molecular detection of rifampicin resistant strains will suffice in determining the management of multidrug resistant tuberculosis in Kebbi State.