Health status of immigrant children and environmental survey of the child day care centers in Samutsakorn province, Thailand

Abstract

Samutsakorn Province is one of the popular provinces attracted by immigrant workers rushing to work in the factories and Thai food industries particularly Myanmar natives. The poor hygiene of personal behaviours, congested accommodation and limited sanitation lead to the health problems of the immigrant workers due to various infectious diseases undertaken and looked after by the Samutsakorn general hospital. The concern of intestinal parasitic infections on public health has been noted which can be spread from the infected immigrant areas to the virginal areas through the close contact and fecal-oral transmission of contaminated food and water. Our study was focused on total 372 immigrant children who resided in 8 child-daycare centers in terms of physical examination, stool examination, environmental examination surrounded the centers. The results showed high prevalence of intestinal parasitic infections at 70.2%. which was composed of both helminths and protozoa as follows: Trichuris trichiura (51.3%), Enterobius vermicularis (25.2%), Ascaris lumbricoides (14.2%), hookworms (11.6%), Giardia lamblia (10.2%), Endolimax nana (3.5%), Entamoeba coli (2.7%) and Blastocystis hominis (0.5%). The physical examination was un-remarkable except head lice and nail examination were positive in some cases. The environmental survey showed numerous house flies nearby the accommodation positive with some helminthic eggs such as A. lumbricoides, E. vermicularis, hookworms, Taenia spp. and minute intestinal flukes. The main factor of high prevalence of intestinal parasites has been hypothesized whether they were infected along with their parents during their daily lives before and after settle down in Thailand. The problem of intestinal parasites in immigrant children is quite epidemiologically impact as they can serve as the carriers to spread the diseases.