Leukocyte Profile of Children Hospitalized in Neonatology Services for Suspected Infection in Kinshasa City, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Abstract

Neonatal infection (NI) remains a public health problem of concern because of its frequency and severity, which is related to the immuno-incompetence of the newborn and the risk of mortality, which is in the order of 10% to 30%. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 30 to 40% of these newborn deaths are due to neonatal infections of bacterial origin. The present work was initiated with the aim of establishing the leukocyte profile of sick newborns with hyperthermia or hypothermia, in neonatology services for a better management of the newborn. The cross-sectional study was conducted in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) of a period from January 01 to December 31, 2018 with a sample consisting of 218 newborns from 0 to 29 days admitted in the neonatology service. The software Microsoft Excel 2010 and SPSS for Windows version 22.0 served us in the encoding and analysis of data. The results obtained in this study presented the cells of the white lineage, then explained the infections in neonatology while examining the pathological variations of the different types of white blood cells. This study also showed that there is a lack of concordance between the clinical (181 or 83% of newborns) and biological (126 newborns with infection or 57, 8%) with statistically significant evidence.