The transmission and epidemiology of urinary schistosomiasis is associated with low socioeconomic status such as poverty, overcrowding and poor sanitation (Zhang et al., 2010), and other religious/occupational related activities like ablution, fishing and farming-irrigation activities (Ofoezie 2002). These factors that characterized Shonga community, may readily account for the long standing history of schistosomiasis among her farmers (Amin 2018). Farida and Hassan (2012) also recorded a similarly high infection (60%) among rice growers in Morogoro, Tanzania which has a comparable socio-economic and environmental status to that of Shonga.
This study shows that the overall prevalence of urinary schistosomiasis is high (46.3%) among the farmers, similarly, Robert et al., (2009) recorded 41.5% among farmers in Benue state, Nigeria. However, our result is lower than the 60% prevalence rate recorded by Farida and Hassan (2012) among rice growers in Morogoro, Tanzania, while it is higher than that of Damen et al., (2018), who recorded 18.7% among irrigation farmers in North-central of Nigeria. Nevertheless, high prevalence of schistosomiasis among pre-school and school children with 71.8% and 57.7% had been documented by Mafiana et al., (2003) and Adeyeba et al., (2002) in Ogun and Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. These variations may be related to several factors such as differences in socio-economic status, socio-cultural, public health provision, gender, personal hygiene, occupation and religion, as all these could influence frequent human contact with contaminated fresh water (Huang and Manderson 1992). Another factor that might contribute to the variations in the result is the period of the year when the study was conducted.
Few works have dealt with variation of urinary schistosomiasis among farmers while grouping them by their gender and religion, probably because of the general believe that females are more involved with water related activities (domestic chores) likewise Muslims engaging more with water related activities, i.e. their “ablution rituals” which they do five times daily in addition to their regular anal or urethral orifice washing after urination or defecation. Consequently, this predisposes these groups to urinary schistosomiasis. With regards to infection prevalence among farmers by religion, although Muslim farmers were slightly more infected than Christian farmers, but with no statistical significant difference, however, this finding is in agreement with that of Larry et al., (2005). This could be due to an improvement in awareness creation among the group over the years. Considering infection prevalence among farmers by gender, we observed significantly higher infection prevalence among female farmers than their male counterpart, which may be due to their domestic responsibilities like washing of clothes and fetching of water from the stream, as this is the usual custom in Africa. Nevertheless, our result is similar to a study reported in Nigeria by Oluwasogo and Fagbemi (2013), but differs from that of Geleta et al., (2015) reported in Ethiopia.
The result of our generalized linear model with interactions between farming type and gender, and farming type and religion using sugar cane farming type as a reference point, given that this type of farming has been reported to be strongly correlated with schistosomiasis (Amorim et al., 2014), shows that vegetable farming is significantly different from other types of farming while infection prevalence between male vegetable farmers is also statistically different from female vegetable farmers. The odds of contracting urinary schistosomiasis among vegetable farmers are 3.5 higher than other types of farming while the odds of male vegetable farmers getting infected is 0.04 significantly higher than female vegetable farmers. These differences could be due to vegetable farming requiring more irrigation activities than other farming types for example yam farming. Also, grouping farming type by religion shows that yam farmers were statistically different from other farmers, while there was no significant difference between Muslim and Christian farmers irrespective of their farming type.
This study shows that urinary schistosomiasis is endemic among the farmers in Shonga, Edu Local Government of Kwara State, Nigeria, and that different crop producers are statistically not uniformly exposed to the disease, especially when grouping the farmers by their gender and religion. We believe that our findings will be useful in guiding the Federal Government and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in appropriate channeling of public health interventions in the study location as well as other communities with schistosomiasis history and similar socio-environmental status to control this life threatening parasitic disease, especially among farmers who strive through the huddles to put food on our tables. However, owing to our limited resources, the authors agree that their sample size is relatively small to infer a more logical conclusion. Therefore, it would be nice to conduct a similar investigation with larger population for an evidence-based guidance in urinary schistosomiasis management.