THE MENACE OF MALARIA AMONG CHILDREN AND PREGNANT WOMEN IN NIGERIA

ABSTRACT

The study investigated menace of malaria among children and pregnant women of Ukwa East Local Government Area. The study focuses on the concepts like definition of malaria, history of malaria, effect of malaria on pregnant women and children, symptoms of malaria, treatment and prevention of malaria fever. The descriptive survey cohort research method used. Two hundred and fifty (25) samples male up of both children and pregnant women were used for the study from three (3) communities that were selected using stratified sampling technique. A self-structured questionnaire was used as a research instrument for data collection. A descriptive statistics frequency count, percentage was used to analyze personal data of the respondents and non-parametric statistics of chi-square (X2) set at 0.05 alpha level of significance was adopted to analyze the hypotheses tested for the study. The result shows that poor environmental sanitation, constant mosquito bite and poor awareness on incidence and poor prevention and control of malaria hinders both children and pregnant women’s health. The researcher recommends among others general cleaning of the surrounding through the use of sanitary inspectors to direct its towards the provision of adequate medical care to our localities and community health centers. The community should equally assist the government morally and financially without any delay in running the rural health centers in the town as to improving the quality of health care services in the area.