Introduction: Female genital schistosomiasis (FGS), affecting over 56 million women and girls, is a neglected tropical disease with substantial public health implications. Existing evidence on its impact on reproductive health, particularly infertility, is limited and, in most cases, inconclusive. This systematic review aims to gather evidence on the magnitude of FGS-related gynecological manifestations and infertility among females of reproductive age living in countries across Africa.
Methods: We will search PubMed, CINAHL, LILACS, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and African Journals Online (AJOL) from inception to 31st August 2026, without language restrictions, using terms such as "female genital schistosomiasis", "FGS", and "infertility" together with all applicable alternative terms nested with the appropriate Boolean operators. We will also search gray sources such as conference proceedings, dissertations, WHO databases, and preprint repositories for studies. The reference lists of relevant studies will be hand-searched for additional studies potentially missed by our searches. Retrieved studies will be collated and deduplicated using EndNote and exported to Rayyan QCRI for screening. At least two reviewers will independently select studies, extract data, and assess the quality of the included studies using validated tools, resolving disagreements through discussion. We will use pooled proportions for non-comparative studies and odds ratios or risk ratios for comparative studies reporting categorical data, while mean and mean difference (MD) will be used to summarize continuous data. All estimates will be reported with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Random-effects or fixed-effect meta-analysis models will be employed, depending on the extent of heterogeneity between studies. The heterogeneity will be assessed graphically for overlapping CIs and statistically using the I2 statistic. We will conduct sub-group analyses when there is significant heterogeneity, and sensitivity analyses to assess the robustness of pooled estimates.
Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42023449271.
© 2026. The Author(s).