Intestinal Parasitosis among HIV Positive Patients Accessing Healthcare in a Medical Centre in Norhtern Nigeria

TLDR: The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection has continued to pose a lot of challenges to global health and it is posited that the prevalence of these parasites has more to do with sanitary status and living conditions than immune status.

Abstract: The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection has continued to pose a lot of challenges to global health. About 4.5 million infected people live in Nigeria (Tyodugh et al., 2012). The infection is known to have altered both epidemiology and outcome of opportunistic parasiticinfections hitherto known as one of the most significant causes of illness in developing countries (Tian et al., 2012). Parasitic infections reported as the hallmark of AIDS (Ramakrishnan et al., 2007) have also been reported to have no significant difference in prevalence between HIV positive and HIV negative individuals (Berenji et al., 2012; Yosefi et al., 2012). In fact, Poka and associates posited that the prevalence of these parasites has more to do with sanitary status and living conditions than immune status (Poka et al., 2012). ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 4 Number 4 (2015) pp. 768-776 http://www.ijcmas.com