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Epidemiology of acute respiratory infections in children - preliminary results of a cohort in a rural north Indian community

Authors :
Ritvik Amarchand
Chandrakant S Pandav
Sanjay K Rai
Arti Kapil
Kathryn E. Lafond
Puneet Misra
Siddhartha Saha
Suresh K. Kapoor
Anand Krishnan
Fatimah S. Dawood
Rizwan Abdulkader Suliankatchi
Vivek Gupta
Vishnubhatla Sreenivas
Shobha Broor
Abhishek Wahi
Renu B. Lal
Debjani Ram Purakayastha
Marc-Alain Widdowson
Source :
BMC Infectious Diseases
Publication Year :
2015
Publisher :
Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2015.

Abstract

Background Despite acute respiratory infections being a major cause of death among children in developing countries including India, there is a lack of community-based studies that document its burden and aetiology. Methods A dynamic cohort of children aged 0–10 years was established in four villages in a north Indian state of Haryana from August 2012 onwards. Trained health workers conducted weekly home visits to screen children for acute respiratory infection (ARI) defined as one of the following: cough, sore throat, nasal congestion, earache/discharge, or breathing difficulty. Nurses clinically assessed these children to grade disease severity based on standard age-specific guidelines into acute upper or lower respiratory infection (AURI or ALRI) and collected nasal/throat swabs for pathogen testing. Results Our first year results show that ARI incidence in 0–10 years of age was 5.9 (5.8–6.0) per child-year with minimal gender difference, the ALRI incidence in the under-five age group was higher among boys (0.43; 0.39–0.49) as compared to girls (0.31; 0.26–0.35) per child year. Boys had 2.4 times higher ARI-related hospitalization rate as compared to girls. Conclusion ARI impose a significant burden on the children of this cohort. This study platform aims to provide better evidence for prevention and control of pneumonia in developing countries.

Details

ISSN :
14712334
Volume :
15
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
BMC Infectious Diseases
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....37778a45f9df3e6517f6a22b89ae7834
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-015-1188-1