Intestinal parasitism prevalence amongst children from six indigenous communities residing in Cali, Colombia.

OBJECTIVE

Establishing the prevalence of intestinal parasitism in children aged 5 to 14 years of age from six indigenous communities residing in the city of Cali.

METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional, descriptive epidemiological study was carried out in six indigenous communities residing in the city of Cali; it consisted of making a direct serial and concentration coproparasitological examination of a randomly selected sample of fifty-seven 5 to 14 year-old children.

RESULTS

Of the 57 samples obtained, 84 % of the children were infected with parasites; protozoa (98 %) predominated over helminths (16.7 %) and mixed parasitemia was found in 14.6 % of the samples. Monoparasitism appeared in children over 10 years of age and biparasitism (10.4 %) and polyparasitism (52.1 %) in children under 10 years of age. Regarding occult blood determination, 6 % were observed to be positive in all the samples analysed; 4 % of these results were associated with E. histolyticaldispar. The simple parasitism index (SPI) reflected a high degree of infestation amongst the children included in the study.

CONCLUSIONS

The prevalence of intestinal parasitism in indigenous infants was higher than that reported nationally in the overall adolescent and school-aged children population in the same age group. Mono- and polyparasitism prevailed in the positive samples. The infestation load was not randomly distributed amongst the communities.