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Review
. 2020 Oct 5:13:1178633720962812.
doi: 10.1177/1178633720962812. eCollection 2020.

Prevalence of Soil-Transmitted Helminth Infection Among School-Aged Children of Ethiopia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Tamirat Hailegebriel  1 , Endalkachew Nibret  1 , Abaineh Munshea  1
Affiliations
Review

Prevalence of Soil-Transmitted Helminth Infection Among School-Aged Children of Ethiopia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Tamirat Hailegebriel et al. Infect Dis (Auckl). .

Abstract

Background: Soil-transmitted helminths (STH) are still major health problems in resource-poor countries. Despite several epidemiological studies were available in Ethiopia, summarized data on the prevalence of STH among school-aged children (SAC) is lacking in the country.

Objective: This study was aimed to summarize the existing published studies of STH among SAC children in Ethiopia.

Methods: The search was carried out in open access databases such as Science Direct, Scopus, and PubMed Central which reported STH in Ethiopia. Open access articles published between 2000 and 2019 were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled prevalence was determined using a random-effect model while heterogeneities between studies were evaluated by I 2 test.

Results: A total of 46 338 children (Male = 23 374 and Female = 22 964) were included in the 70 eligible studies for this meta-analysis. The pooled prevalence of STH among SAC was 33.4%; 95% CI, 29.3% to 37.7% in Ethiopia. Ascaris lumbricoides (19.9%; 95% CI, 17.2%-22.6%) was the most prevalent STH followed by Trichuris trichiura (12.4%; 95% CI, 10.6%-14.1%), and hookworm (7.9%; 95% CI, 6.9%-8.9%) infection in the country. High prevalence of STH was observed in Oromia (42.5%; 95% CI, 31.6%-53.4%) followed by SNNPR (38.3%; 95% CI, 27.7%-48.8%) and Amhara (32.9%; 95% CI, 27.0%-38.8%) regional states. High heterogeneity on the prevalence of STH was observed across studies within and among regions (I 2 > 96% and P < .001).

Conclusion: This review showed that more than one-third of the Ethiopian SAC were infected with STH. The high prevalence of STH observed in this review highlight the needs of improved control and prevention strategies in Ethiopia.

Keywords: Meta-analysis; school-aged children; soil-transmitted helminths; systematic review.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interests:The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
PRISMA flow diagram of publications considered for the review on STH in Ethiopia.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Forest plot for prevalence of STH among schoolchildren in Ethiopia. Each square represent effect size (ES) of individual studies and the horizontal line represent the 95% CI. The diamond indicates the pooled effect and the vertical dash lines indicate the overall estimate.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Regional distribution of STH among schoolchildren in Ethiopia.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Forest plot showing the pooled prevalence of STH among schoolchildren in Ethiopia before and after the launching of MDA in Ethiopia.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Funnel plot indicates publication bias across studies used in this meta-analysis.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Meta-regression analysis of (a) Region of study. (b) Parasitological methods used. (c) Year of publication of STH among schoolchildren in Ethiopia. Abbreviations: FECT, formol ether concentration; KK, Kato-Katz; McM, McMaster; MP, mini parasep; WM, wait mount.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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