Prevalence and risk factors of soil transmitted helminths from rural field practice area of a tertiary care center from northern India

Authors

  • Shewtank Goel Department of Microbiology, Teerthanker Mahaveer Medical College and Research Centre, Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh
  • Rakesh Tank Department of General Medicine, SHKM Govt. Medical College, Mewat, Haryana
  • Abhishek Singh Department of Community Medicine, SHKM Govt. Medical College, Mewat, Haryana
  • Sanjeev Kumar Khichi Department of Community Medicine, SHKM Govt. Medical College, Mewat, Haryana
  • Pooja Goyal Department of Community Medicine, ESIC Medical College, Faridabad
  • Rakesh Arya Department of Community Medicine, Mayo Institute of Medical Sciences, Uttar Pradesh

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20161746

Keywords:

Prevalence, Risk factors, Soil transmitted helminths

Abstract

Background: Soil-transmitted helminths (STH) are a major public health problem in our country, affecting the physical growth and cognitive development. STH infections are considered a leading cause of sickness, absenteeism and disability adjusted life years lost. Aim of the study was to assess the prevalence and risk factors of soil transmitted helminths (STH) in Farrukhabad district, India.

Methods: A total of 1203 study subjects from 602 eligible households fulfilling the eligibilty criteria. Thus equal number of children and adults were recruited from rural and urban areas. In each household, one child participant of the age 1-15 years and one adult, older than 15 years, and willing to participate, were eligible to participate in this study. All enrolled subjects were provided with a screw- capped plastic container to collect their stool sample. The following day, a field worker visited the subject’s home to collect the container. Saline and iodine wet preparations were examined for the presence of nematode ova. All positive stool samples were re-examined by the McMaster egg counting technique to quantify the number of eggs per gram of stool.

Results: Overall prevalence of STH was 14.3% (95% CI 4.4-19.2) among study subjects. Hookworm was the predominant STH identified with a prevalence of 11.3% (95% CI 1.1-17.4), followed by Ascaris lumbricoides with a prevalence of 4.5% (95% CI 0.5-7.6). Prevalence of STH was observed to be 13.2% (95% CI 8.7-17.2) and 7.6% (95% CI 4.4-10.7) in rural and urban areas respectively. Age category, residing in a field-hut, presence of cat at home, presence of untrimmed nails, open air defaecation, habitually eating food that has fallen on the ground, not washing hands with soap and water after defaecation, and consumption of deworming tablet turned out to be independent risk factors for acquiring STH infection in our study.

Conclusions: Identification of at-risk groups along with Strategic planning and health education, awareness campaigns along with mass drug administration could reduce the burden of STH significantly.

 

References

World Health Organization (WHO). Eliminating soil transmitted helminthiases as a public health problem in children. Progress Report 2001-2010 and Strategic Plan 2011-2020. Geneva: WHO. 2012.

Ostan I, Kilimcioglu AA, Girginkardesler N, Ozyurt BC, Limoncu ME, Ok UZ. Health inequities: lower socio-economic conditions and higher incidences of intestinal parasites. BMC Public Health. 2007;7:342.

WHO. WHO plans major scale-up of interventions for soil-transmitted helminthiases (intestinal worms). WHO; 2012c. Available at: http://www.who.int/ neglected_diseases/ STH_scale_up_2012/ en/ .

WHO. The Fifty-fourth World Health Assembly, Fifth Report of Committee A: Schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminth infections. Geneva: WHO; 2001. Available at: http://apps.who.int/gb/ archive/ pdf_files/ WHA54/ ea5451.pdf.

WHO. WHO I PCT databank. WHO; 2012a. Available at: http://www.who.int/neglected_diseases/ preventive_chemotherapy/sth/en/.

Singh P, Gupta ML, Thakur TS, Vaidya NK. Intestinal parasitism in Himachal Pradesh. Indian J Med Sci. 1991;45(8):201-4,200.

Ramesh GN, Malla N, Raju GS, Sehgal R, Ganguly NK, Mahajan RC, et al. Epidemiological study of parasitic infestations in lower socio-economic group in Chandigarh (north India). Indian J Med Res. 1991;93:47-50.

Tomono N, Anantaphruti MT, Jongsuksuntigul P, Thongthien P, Leerapan P, Silapharatsamee Y, et al. Risk factors of helminthiases among school children in southern Thailand. Southeast Asian J Trop Med Public Health. 2003;34:264-8.

Levecke B, Behnke JM, Ajjampur SS, Albonico M, Ame SM, Charlier J, et al. A comparison of the sensitivity and fecal egg counts of the McMaster egg counting and Kato-Katz thick smear methods for soil-transmitted helminths. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2011;5:e1201.

Levecke B, De Wilde N, Vandenhoute E, Vercruysse J. Field validity and feasibility of four techniques for the detection of Trichuris in simians: a model for monitoring drug efficacy in public health? PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2009;3:e366.

Rajendran R, Sunish IP, Mani TR, Munirathinam A, Arunachalam N, Satyanarayana K, et al. Community-based study to assess the efficacy of DEC plus ALB against DEC alone on bancroftian filarial infection in endemic areas in Tamil Nadu, south India. Trop Med Int Health. 2006;11:851-61.

Kang G, Mathew MS, Rajan DP, Daniel JD, Mathan MM, Mathan VI, et al. Prevalence of intestinal parasites in rural southern Indians. Trop Med Int Health. 1998;3:70-5.

Sorensen E, Ismail M, Amarasinghe DK, Hettiarachchi I, Das-senaieke TS. The prevalence and control of soil-transmitted nematode infections among children and women in the plantations in Sri Lanka. Ceylon Medical Journal. 1996;41:37-41.

Schad GA, Nawaunsk TA. Kochar V. Human Ecology and the Distribution and Abundance of Hookworm Populations. In: Croll, NA. Cross JH, editors. Human Ecology and Infectious Diseases. New York: Academic Press. 1983;187-223.

Kattula D, Sarkar R, Ajjampur SSR, Minz S, Levecke B, Muliyil J, Kang G. Prevalence & risk factors for soil transmitted helminth infection among school children in south India. Indian J Med Res. 2014; 139:76-82.

Alemu A, Atnafu A, Addis Z, Shiferaw Y, Teklu T, Mathewos B, et al. Soil transmitted helminths and Schistosoma mansoni infections among school children in Zarima town, northwest Ethiopia. BMC Infect Dis. 2011;11:189.

Gopal S, Sarkar R, Banda K, Govindarajan J, Harijan BB, Jeyakumar MB, et al. Study of water supply & sanitation practices in India using geographic information systems: some design & other considerations in a village setting. Indian J Med Res. 2009;129:233-41.

Curtale F, Pezzotti P, Saad YS, Aloi A. An analysis of individual, household, and environmental risk factors for intestinal helminth infection among children in Qena Governorate, Upper Egypt. J Trop Pediatr. 1999;45:14-7.

Hoa NTV, Noda S, Uga S, Thuan LK, Aoki Y, Fujimaki Y. Parasite egg contamination of hands in a suburban area of Hanoi, Vietnam. Trop Med Health 2010;38:75-9.

Downloads

Published

2017-01-02

How to Cite

Goel, S., Tank, R., Singh, A., Khichi, S. K., Goyal, P., & Arya, R. (2017). Prevalence and risk factors of soil transmitted helminths from rural field practice area of a tertiary care center from northern India. International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 4(6), 1983–1987. https://doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20161746

Issue

Section

Original Research Articles