A small-scale survey of intestinal parasite infections among children and adolescents in Legaspi city, the Philippines

Abstract

The Philippines has been known as an endemic area for malaria (Belizario et al., 1997), schistosomiasis japonicum (Mcgarvey et al., 1996) and intestinal capillariasis (Cross, 1992). The Philippines and Southeast Asia are reported as highly prevalent areas of intestinal helminthes as well (Carney et al., 1981; Chai and Hongvanthong, 1998). The Philippines are divided into 3 large provinces, Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Legaspi city is located in Visayas area, 544 km from Manila (Fig. 1). To evaluate the status of intestinal parasites infection among children and adolescents in the Philippines, we visited Legaspi city, Philippines, in December, 1998. With the aid of a local missionary, fecal examination was performed on 64 cases of children and adolescents by formalin-ether concentration method. The age of the examinees ranged from 3 to 20 years old, and they were divided into two groups, rural and urban areas. The most of the rural examinees were farmers. The mean infection rate of 64 examinee was 78.1% for helminths and protozoa. The infection rate of intestinal parasites in primary school children was 95.5% which was higher than the rates in preschool children or adolescents. The infection rate in rural area was 92.3% higher than that of urban area (56%). Trichuris trichiura (51%), Ascaris lumbricoides (40%) and hookworm (23.4%), were found to be highly prevalent intestinal helminthes in this study.

Infection status of intestinal parasites in children living in residential institutions in Metro Manila, the Philippines

“…Belizario et al (2002) mentioned that the cumulative prevalence of intestinal helminth infection in pupils of a public elementary school to be included in a treatment program was 94%. The high prevalence of parasitism shown in this study, although lower than that of other examinations reported from children in communities and schools (Auer, 1990;Lee 2000;Belizario et al, 2002) suggests that there is still much room for the improvement of health delivery and health program implementation. Sanitation practices and water quality should be improved, as these are the major contributory factors for the spread of helminth and protozoan infections.…”

“…For parasitic protozoan infections, the most prevalent parasitic protozoans observed in the children was B. hominis and G. lamblia with respective prevalence of 40.7% and 11.6% (Table 1 & 2). B. hominis infection had a significant prevalence that was not shown even in the more recent studies (Lee et al, 2000;Kim et al, 2003). B. hominis is commonly found in the intestinal tract but it is only lately that it is recognized to cause disease (Neva and Brown, 1994;de Leon, 1998) and thus previous researchers may not have given much attention to it.…”

Intestinal parasitic infections in children presenting with diarrhoea in outpatient and inpatient settings in an informal settlement of Nairobi, Kenya

“…Polyparasitism (duo and triple infections) was observed in 12% of the infected samples, mainly involving E. Histolytica with one or two other enteric parasites. This is common and widely reported in children elsewhere [58,59]. Seasonal variations are known to affect the prevalence of a number of infections.…”

The intestinal parasite infection status of inhabitants in the Roxas city, the Philippines

“…It is obvious that high infection rate of A. lumbricoides would affect the growth of children, thus necessitating the medication and education against parasite infection. According to earlier studies on intestinal parasite infection in the Philippines (Cabrera, 1984;Oberst et al, 1987;Lee et al, 2000), the soil-transmitted intestinal helminths such as A. lumbricoides, hookworm, and T. trichiura show more than 30% high infection rates. The present study also revealed similar results.…”