Prevalence of Rota Virus Infection Among Children Below Five Years of Age at Yerwa Maternity and Child Healthcare Center Maiduguri.

Student: Muhammad Hamza (Project, 2025)
Department of Medical Laboratory Science
University of Maiduguri, Borno State

Abstract

Acute infective gastroenteritis is a major global health problem which manifest as three or more watery or loose bowel evacuations in 24 hours period that may last several days with fever and vomiting and a common cause of morbidity and mortality in children. This study aimed at detecting the prevalence of rotavirus infection among children below 5 years of age at Yerwa maternity and child healthcare centre Maiduguri. A total of 200 stool samples were randomly collected and assayed for rotavirus antigen using Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) kit. The study revealed that 19(9.5%) samples were positive for rotavirus antigen. There was higher prevalence rate among male children 10(5.0%) than female 9(4.5%) (P>0.05).The highest and lowest prevalence rate of rotavirus infection of 63.2% (12/19), 36.8% (7/19) and 0 %( 0/19) were found among children aged 0-1 year, 2-3 year and 4-5 years (P>0.05) respectively. This study recommends public health awareness, advocacy and sustainable initiatives to promote rotavirus vaccination recently introduced by the federal government of Nigeria as part of the routine national immunisation programme.

Keywords
prevalence virus infection children below years yerwa maternity child healthcare
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