Topic > Dengue in Malaysia - 1599

Dengue has now emerged as a major public health problem in Malaysia. It was first reported in 1901 in Penang and since then the disease has become endemic, concentrating mainly in urban areas. The objectives of this study were to use spatio-temporal modeling to determine high-risk areas for dengue epidemic. This study examined a total of 25,000 confirmed cases of dengue fever, geocoded by address in Subang Jaya city between January 2006 and December 2009, included in the study. The results were derived from a measurement of the three temporal risk characteristics (frequency, duration and intensity) in order to determine the severity and extent of transmission of the epidemic. The values ​​of the three indices were considered elevated in one spatial unit when their standard values ​​were positive. The measurement of the three time risk indices found that there were areas with a high and significant value for each of the time indices. This suggested that areas within Subang Jaya municipality had different temporal characteristics for the emergence of dengue. The use of three risk measures allowed us to identify the areas at highest risk for the onset of dengue fever, concentrated in the northern region of the city. The correlation coefficient for all three relationship types was greater than 0.7. The value indicated that there was a strong correlation between each time risk index. Although case notification data is subject to bias, this information is available in health services and can lead to important conclusions, recommendations and hypotheses. As a recommendation, temporal risk indices can be used by public health officials to characterize dengue rather than relying on traditional case incidence data…half of paper…discontinued cases. This index gives an idea of ​​the persistence of transmission and represents the average duration, in weeks, of the epidemic waves that occurred in a given period. • Intensity index (γ), characterized as the average incidence of cumulative dengue cases occurring in consecutive weeks per epidemic wave that had persisted for more than two weeks. It can be expressed as: γ = TI / OE where TI is the incidence rate during the indicated period and OE is described above. It assesses the severity of transmission and is based on sequences of weeks with the occurrence of uninterrupted cases. High values ​​indicate transmission concentrated over time. Dengue cases were provided by MPSJ where dengue cases were summarized by residential area, on a weekly basis. Therefore, this study used one week as a time unit for better comparison on different indices.