Prevalence of malaria infection among under five year tribal children residing in malaria endemic forest villages [v1; ref status: awaiting peer review, http://f1000r.es/4n4]

Malaria is a life-threatening protozoal infection and India has the highest malaria burden in South East Asia. The objective of this communication is to assess the prevalence of malaria infection amongst forest dwelling tribal children under the age of five residing in malaria endemic regions of the Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states of India. A total of 5,801 children attended seven outpatient mobile clinics in 2012. Of them, 2,123 children had a history of fever and were screened for malaria with a Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT). About 37% of children had a history of fever. Of them, 34% children were diagnosed with malaria. The majority (66%) of children with a positive RDT had a mixed malaria infection of both and , followed by Plasmodium falciparum P. vivax single infections of (18.9%) and (14.2%). Malaria P. falciparum P. vivax infection is a major public health concern amongst the tribal children residing in these malaria endemic forest villages. Therefore, region specific sustainable intervention measures need to be initiated for the prevention and control of malaria and malaria related deaths in this region. Nimmathota Arlappa ( ) Corresponding author: [email protected] Qureshi I, Qureshi MA, Gudepu RK and Arlappa N. How to cite this article: Prevalence of malaria infection among under five year tribal 2014, children residing in malaria endemic forest villages [v1; ref status: awaiting peer review, ] http://f1000r.es/4n4 F1000Research 3 :286 (doi: ) 10.12688/f1000research.5632.1 © 2014 Qureshi I . This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the , which Copyright: et al Creative Commons Attribution Licence permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication). Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. Grant information: Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed. 20 Nov 2014, :286 (doi: ) First published: 3 10.12688/f1000research.5632.1 1 2 3