Investigating The Relationship Between Malaria Parasitaemia And Widal Positivity

Malaria and typhoid fever are life threatening illnesses of tropical and subtropical regions of the world with almost similar clinical manifestations. An investigation on the relationship between malaria parasitaemia and widal positivity was carried out among 100 patients who consulted doctors at the general out patients department of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Teaching Hospital, Nnewi . Blood samples were collected from patients who manifested clinical symptoms of malaria/typhoid fever . Thick blood films were made and stained with Giemsa staining technique for malaria parasite while tube agglutination test was carried out for widal positivity. Blood , urine and stool samples of patients with high widal titre were cultured in appropriate media. 41.02% of the patients were malaria parasite and widal test positive (somatic antigen) while 27.27% were positive for flagellar antigen. There were occurrence of mixed reaction in widal test among the patients tested. There was no significant relationship between malaria parasitaemia and reactivity of serum with typhoid fever (p<.05). No Salmonella species was isolated from the body fluids cultured. The poor performance of widal test in some laboratories, instant conclusion and poor interpretation of results by prescribers should be checked and base line titre of each location determined.