Introduction:

There are more than 453 070 individuals suffering from physical and mental retardation in Iran, those who need expensive health services and maintenance facilities. Because of their mental, physiological and physical problems in handling personal health care and also living in mass population, they are always at high risk in acquiring contagious infections. In order to decrease their infection rate and then to treat them, it seems that searching their intestine for parasitic infection is highly necessary. The general purpose of this descriptive study was to determine the prevalence of intestinal parasitic infections among the physical and mental retardation's to encourage their sponsors for controlling and more health care on them.

Material and methods:

The current descriptive and cross-sectional study was performed on 86 mental and physical retardation patients. Following completion questionnaire form of cases, three stool samples were collected from each case for direct examination using wet-mount and formaline–ether concentration methods. Data was analysed using SPSS software.

Result:

54.7% of cases included female, 34.9% had more than 20 years old and 65.8% needed the camping observation. 45.3% of cases had previous history of infectious disease, that highest ratio was related to cutaneous fungal disease (25.6%). In total, 48.8% were infected with different types of intestinal parasites and 18.6% had more than one parasite. The parasite frequency, which were detected is followed: Entamoeba coli 32.6%, Giardia lamblia 18.6%, Chilomastix mesnili 11.6%, Lodamoeba butschlii 8.1%, Blastocystis hominis 1.2% and oxyour 1.2%. There was not seen any statistical significant differences of infection rate between male and female cases. The 20-year-old and more age group showed the highest rate of parasitic infection (16.5%). There was seen a statistical significant differences in infection rates between camping and noncamping individual (P < 0.05).

Conclusion:

Fifty per cent infection suggest needs of control and supervision for health care services and facilities to improve their personal health and also prevention of contagious contacts.