Prevalence of Giardiasis in Daycare Children at Rafsanjan

Giardia Lambelia is a unicellur parasite, and has been recognized to be the most common intestinal pathogen worldwide specially in the developing countries. The Giardia agent has been implicated as a common cause of diarrhea in children of daycare centers. Therefore, regular and continuous investigation of this infection is necessary to control and and contain the epidemic of this disease particularly at the children nurseries. The present study was performed to determine the prevalence of giardiasis at Rafsanjan's nurseries in 2003. This cross sectional study was accomplished on 252 children who were selected randomly with the mean age of 5.33±0.96. All relevant variables including age, sex, type of nursery, parent’s job and education, and past history of parasitic infectious disease were gathered from all the participants. Three stool samples were collected from chidren on an every other day basis. The samples were examined using direct and formalin-ether methods. The positive reports were then statistically analyzed. Of all 252 participants, at public nurseias 140 girls (55.56%) and 112 boys (44.44%), the stool exams of 44 children (17.5%) were positive for giardiasis. Twenty seven of the infected children were male. The percentage of giardiasis in children whose mothers were housewife with low education was 22.4% (19 cases). This value among children with poor personal hygiene and with a history of parasitic infectious diseases was 44.4%, and 69.2% respectively. based on our findings, giardiasis still must be regarded as a hygienic problem especially in public nurseries and it can be prevented by continuous public education, and regular training of health workers focusing on improvement of personal hygiene