Prevalence of urinary schistosomiasis in school-aged children in Langai, Plateau State: pre- and post-intervention

Schistosomiasis poses a public health challenges, but for several reasons it is not considered a priority in national and local health policies and programmes. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of health education and drug treatment on the prevalence of Urinary Schistosomiasis among school-aged children in Langai community of Plateau state.

Two hundred and eighteen children (218) subjects who were selected by multi-staged sampling methods were administered semi-structured questionnaires and their urine samples were assayed for S. haematobium ova using the sedimentation method before and after drug treatment with Praziquantel tablets

Pre-intervention, fourteen (14) respondent had urinary Schistosomiasis, giving a prevalence of 6.4% with males (64.3%) having the higher prevalence both pre- and post-intervention. Six weeks after intervention, prevalence had reduced to 0.9%, giving a cure rate of about 92%. Of the 22 respondents (10.1%) who had ever noticed 'blood in their urine', only 6 (27.3%) had Schistosoma ova present in their urine samples at the time of the study.

It was concluded that drug treatment with Praziquantel, especially when combined with Health Education was effective in reducing the prevalence of Urinary Schistosomiasis among school-aged children in Langai Community of Plateau State.