An Analysis of a Dengue Outbreak at a Large Hospital and Epidemiological Evidence for Nosocomial Dengue.

An Analysis of a Dengue Outbreak at a Large Hospital and Epidemiological Evidence for Nosocomial Dengue. J Trop Med. 2018;2018:9579086 Authors: Ehelepola NDB, Wijesinghe WMCM Abstract Reports on dengue outbreaks at hospitals are extremely rare. Here the authors analyze a dengue outbreak at the Teaching Hospital-Kandy (THK), Sri Lanka. Our hypothesis was that the present outbreak of dengue was due to nosocomial infections. Our objectives were to illustrate epidemiological evidence for nosocomial dengue infections among THK workers and comparison of dengue incidence of hospital workers of wards that treat dengue patients with workers of other wards, to ascertain whether most nosocomial dengue incidences occur closer to where dengue patients are treated and vector larvae were detected, and to draw the attention of the medical community to the significance of hospital outbreaks, making suggestions on how to improve dengue preventive work at the THK. We calculated weekly dengue incidences for the hospital workers and for the surrounding Kandy district population, plotted epicurves, and compared them. We also compared these with the temporal changes of numbers of patients who were admitted for other illnesses and then diagnosed with dengue and the numbers of containers with vector mosquito larvae found on hospital premises. Dengue incidence of the hospital workers for the 24-week study period (2388 per 100000 population) was significantly ...
Source: Journal of Tropical Medicine - Category: Tropical Medicine Tags: J Trop Med Source Type: research