author(s)
Shafiqur Rahman, Fazal Jalil, Hidayat Khan, Muhammad Ayub Jadoon, Ikram Ullah, Mujaddadur Rehman, Abdul Majeed Khan, Adnan Khan, Azam Hayat and Zaffar Iqbal

abstract
Malaria is one of the major health problems caused by a vector-borne eukaryotic protist of the genus plasmodium. Plasmodium is a parasite which is transmitted naturally by the bite of a female mosquito anopheles called malarial vectors. The present study was aimed to determine the prevalence of malaria in local population of District Shangla, Swat (KPK-Pakistan). A questionnaire was designed to collect the demographic and clinical information of the study subjects. A total of 1336 study subjects, expected to have malarial symptoms, were included in this study during the June to August, 2014. The identification of malarial parasite was carried out by using both Rapid Diagnosis Test (RDT) method and microscopic examination. After proceeding for clinical diagnosis, out of the total (n=1336) 187 (13.99%) samples were found positive for malarial parasite and 1149 (86.01%) were found negative. The malarial infection was found more common in males (112; 65.24%) as compare to females (65; 34.76%) in the study population. The month wise distribution of malaria in the present study indicated that malarial cases were high in the month of August (15.19%) followed by July (14.82%). Furthermore, the most prevalent age group for malaria in the study sample set was Group B (51.34%) followed by Group A (33.68%). However, 98.93% of the cases had P. Vivax and other malarial parasites like P. ovale and P. malariae were not detected in this study.