Abstract
Background: Malaria is still the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developing countries including Ethiopia. Ethiopia is planned to minimize forty percent of malaria incidence at the end of 2020 by applying different prevention and control method. There is limited information about trend of malaria in the study area. Therefore, this study was designed to address this gap. Methods: Institutional based retrospective study was conducted from to determine a six-year trend analysis of malaria prevalence in the Bati district. All malaria cases were carefully reviewed by trained laboratory technologists from the laboratory record books of Bati hospital and health center. The data was entered in to excel 2013 and descriptive statistics were used to determine frequencies and percentages of malaria cases, trends of malaria transmission in terms of years and seasonal distribution. Result: A total of 84,269 and 22,185 malaria suspected patients were requested for blood films and Rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) respectively. Of this, 12,032 (11.3%) malaria cases were microscopically confirmed. Plasmodium falciparum were the most dominant parasite detected, which accounted for 57.6 %. The highest peak of malaria cases was reported during the summer season. The majority of the cases (57.2%) were reported among the >15 years age groupConclusion: Malaria is still a major public health problem in the study area. In order to decrease the number of malaria cases further, government, all healthcare workers, and community should strengthen and scale up malaria prevention and control strategies in the study area.
Six Year Trend Analysis of Malaria Prevalence in Bati District, Northeastern Ethiopia: A Retrospective Study