Frequency and risk factors of malaria infection in Dera

Background: Nearly, half world's people are at high risk from malaria disease and around 1 to 2 million people die from malaria every year. Objectives: The current study was conducted to determine the frequency of malarial disease in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan. Methods: The cross-sectional study was carried out to examine the malarial infection in the blood of 3398 suspected malarial patients from January to July, 2017. Statistical analysis was done by SPSS. Results: Among 3398 suspected patients, 415(12.2%) were positive for Plasmodium. Out of these, 96.6% (n= 401) cases were due to Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax) infection and only 3.4% (n= 14) had Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum). In seasonal variations, P. vivax infection was highest (n=121) in July and lowest (n=15) in February. Prevalence of disease was 52.8% (n=219) in less than 14 years ages peoples and 47.2% (n=196) in above 14 years ages. Males (n=286, 68.9%) were highly infected by Plasmodium as compared to females. Conclusions: Malaria infection was considerably frequent in Dera Ismail Khan, one of the hottest areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The high incidence rate of P. vivax is significantly threat to humans’ population in Dera Ismail Khan and may lead to serious health problems, including cerebral malaria.