Factors Associated with Placental Malaria in Upper West Regional Hospital-Wa, Ghana

ABSTRACT

Background

Placental malaria (PM) poses life-threatening complications to pregnant women as they are at increased risk of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. Despite several interventions put in place to reduce malaria in pregnancy in Ghana, latest studies in the northern part revealed one out of every two pregnant women delivering in a hospital have PM. The study determined the proportion of women with PM in the Upper West Regional Hospital (UWR) and its associated factors.

Methods

A cross-sectional hospital-based design with a quantitative approach was carried out among pregnant women delivering at UWR Hospital. The eligible mothers (300) were consecutively recruited and a structured questionnaire used to collect data from the mothers. Placental blood samples were taken for microscopy to determine PM parasitemia. Microsoft Excel 2016 and Stata version 15 were used to analyze the data. Univariate and multivariate analysis were done for the factors using simple and multiple logistic regression respectively.  Significance was considered for all variables at p