Objectives: To investigate the prevalence of asymptomatic malaria parasitaemia and anemia in nursery and primary school children and correlate parasite density with haemoglobin levels.
Design: Cross sectional study.
Setting: Samples were collected from children attending the Saint Theresa's bilingual school and the Government Primary school, Buea, South West Province, Cameroon.
Subjects: 297 nursery and primary school children two to 11 years old selected based on parental consent. MAIN OUTOME MEASURES: Relationship between asymptomatic malaria and anaemia.
Results: The prevalence of asymptomatic malaria in children was 30.3%. Parasite prevalence and density was independent of age and sex (p > 0.05). The mean haemoglobin level for parasitaemic children was 11.9 g/dl (+/- SD1.1) compared with 12.1 g/dl (+/- 1.2) for non-parasitaemic children. The difference was not significant (t = 1.918, p > 0.05). Anaemia when present was mild. No correlation was found between malaria parasite density and haemoglobin levels (r = -0.065; p > 0.05).
Conclusion: Asymptomatic malaria was accompanied by low grade parasitaemia, which did not seem to have a significant effect on haemoglobin levels.