With the current trends in integrated management of childhood diseases in developing countries, it is important to resolve the controversies of coinfections between helminths and malaria, and properly evaluate the epidemiology of diarrhegenic parasites with molecular study, which sometimes cause overlapping infections. Again, the major challenge facing the global success of mass deworming initiative aimed at controlling helminths is lack of sustainability due to limited donor funds. We therefore decided to evaluate the effectiveness of a school based deworming program using only the school teachers without spending money on training and logistics. Demographic information, height and weight were measured and stool samples were collected from pupils in a semi-rural area of Nigeria during the initial visit by the study team. Malaria cases were recorded over a 3 month malaria transmission period prior to stool sampling. Four hundred and seventy six (33%) of the study population was infected with one Soil transmitted helminth (STH) or the other, especially with Askaris lumbricoides (26.0%) and Hookworm (8.4%). We found a negative association between malaria and STH in this community. Helminth infection rate of 18.3% was observed in children with malaria compared to 34.4% in controls. We also found a high carriage rate of Giardia (37.2%), low Cryptosporidium (1%) and no E. histolytica infection contrary to previous studies that were based on traditional diagnostic techniques. There was 7.9% reduction in the number children with low weight-for-age in the helminth infected children at 6 months after mass deworming, the number of uninfected children with low weight-for-age also reduced by 3.2%. There was also a reduction in the number of children with more than 25% absenteeism among both helminth infected (13.9%) as well as uninfected (7.2%). The association between malaria and STH in our study calls for the need for integrated approach to health problem in Africa instead of the common vertical campaigns. Results from our molecular study also shows the need to strengthen collaborations between researchers from developed and developing countries to be able to map out the true epidemiology of these parasites and hopefully produce novel, inexpensive diagnostics that circumvent the need for advance technological infrastructure

With the current trends in integrated management of childhood diseases in developing countries, it is important to resolve the controversies of coinfections between helminths and malaria, and properly evaluate the epidemiology of diarrhegenic parasites with molecular study, which sometimes cause overlapping infections. Again, the major challenge facing the global success of mass deworming initiative aimed at controlling helminths is lack of sustainability due to limited donor funds. We therefore decided to evaluate the effectiveness of a school based deworming program using only the school teachers without spending money on training and logistics. Demographic information, height and weight were measured and stool samples were collected from pupils in a semi-rural area of Nigeria during the initial visit by the study team. Malaria cases were recorded over a 3 month malaria transmission period prior to stool sampling. Four hundred and seventy six (33%) of the study population was infected with one Soil transmitted helminth (STH) or the other, especially with Askaris lumbricoides (26.0%) and Hookworm (8.4%). We found a negative association between malaria and STH in this community. Helminth infection rate of 18.3% was observed in children with malaria compared to 34.4% in controls. We also found a high carriage rate of Giardia (37.2%), low Cryptosporidium (1%) and no E. histolytica infection contrary to previous studies that were based on traditional diagnostic techniques. There was 7.9% reduction in the number children with low weight-for-age in the helminth infected children at 6 months after mass deworming, the number of uninfected children with low weight-for-age also reduced by 3.2%. There was also a reduction in the number of children with more than 25% absenteeism among both helminth infected (13.9%) as well as uninfected (7.2%). The association between malaria and STH in our study calls for the need for integrated approach to health problem in Africa instead of the common vertical campaigns. Results from our molecular study also shows the need to strengthen collaborations between researchers from developed and developing countries to be able to map out the true epidemiology of these parasites and hopefully produce novel, inexpensive diagnostics that circumvent the need for advance technological infrastructure