Taenia solium is one of the commonly occurring tapeworms of man and the source of infection is by consumption of improperly cooked or raw pork containing viable cysticerci. A high rate of incidence of cysticercosis in pigs in Bangalore district was reported based on examination of meat and organs of slaughtered pigs (Placid and Hafeez, 1998). It was endeavoured to note the level of taeniosis in persons associated with pig slaughter in the city. Taeniosis has been reported in India by Pathak (1984) and Varma and Ahluwalia (1989) from various districts of Uttar Pradesh, Bishar (1991) from Assam and Meghalaya and from Chandigarh (Mahajan et al, 1995). However, there appears to be no report from South India, hence the study was undertaken.

Stool samples were collected during the year 2002 from 100 persons (male 56, female 44) associated with slaughter house (n=51) activities and also from those residing in the vicinity of slaughter house (n=30) and who consumed pork and its products (n= 19). The stool samples were processed by sedimentation and formalin-ether methods (WHO, 1991).

The number of faecal samples examined and the percentage of infection are recorded in Table 1.

A total of 16% prevalence of taeniosis was observed. A higher percentage of taeniosis (12–16) was observed in the present study (Table 1) when compared with the findings of other workers who had found taeniosis in persons ranging from 0.5% to 6.59%. The study also showed that females had higher (15.90–20.45 %) rate of infection than males and similar observation was made by Varma and Ahluwalia (1989).

Out of 600 human samples examined from different localities of Uttar Pradesh, 24 (4%) were found to be positive for T. solium eggs (Pathak et al., 1984). Varma and Ahluwalia (1989) made an incidental study of taeniosis by collecting 2,055 human stool samples from various districts of Western and Central Uttar Pradesh and 119 (5.79%) persons were found to be infected with taeniosis. Bishar (1991) reported taeniosis from Assam and Meghalaya with 1.96% and 1.97% prevalence, respectively on the basis of 913 human faecal samples examined. At the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, between 1964–1980, stool examination of over 0.25 million samples revealed taeniosis in 0.5% cases and the incidence was found to be higher in rural areas and among those with poor personal hygiene (Mahajan et al., 1995).

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