Modeling the Hospital Burden of Common Infectious Diseases With Application to Northeastern Thailand

Abstract

This study aims to identify the incidence patterns of the most common infectious diseases, including acute diarrhea, pyrexia of unknown origin, hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, and pneumonia, in the 7 provinces of northeastern Thailand, based on individual hospital case records of infectious disease routinely reported from 1999 to 2004. Log-linear regression analysis with age-group, season, and district as factors was used, with data from all 4 diseases as outcomes combined into 1 model. confirmed that the highest incidence of each infectious disease occurred in children aged less than 5 years of age, with particularly high rates for diarrhea. In addition, the burden of pyrexia of unknown origin was found to be lower in districts bordering Laos, and the incidence rates were higher from April to June in 1999-2001 and 2004 and from July to September in 2002-2003. Higher incidence rates also occurred in most rural districts of Loei and Udon Thani provinces.