Trend of malarial deaths admitted in medicine wards of a tertiary care centre at Cuttack, Odisha, India

Abstract

Background: Malaria is one of the most important vector borne diseases causing significant morbidity and mortality. The trend of malaria cases in a tertiary care institution will reflect the changes in burden of disease in health care centers. There is a need to look at the malaria mortality, morbidity and its contributing factors in tertiary care institutions in the state. On this background an attempt has been made to undertake three year retrospective record based analysis of malarial deaths in Medicine Department of S.C.B. Medical College, Cuttack. Objective of the study is to study the trend of malaria fatalities in a tertiary care center. Methods: Retrospective record based descriptive study. The data was collected from the bed tickets in the record room of SCB Medical College, Cuttack, over 3 calendar years i.e. 2010, 2011 and 2012, using predesigned and pretested formats. The data thus collected were analysed using statistical software i.e. SPSS v11. Results: The total number of fatalities reported over the total of three calendar years was 1934. The absolute number of deaths due to malaria over each of the three years 2010, 2011 and 2012 were 594, 630 and 710 respectively. The trend thus is an increasing number of fatalities attributed to malaria. Conclusions: The trend of malarial deaths shows that malaria continues to be the one of the largest contributors of mortality even in tertiary care institutions and in absolute numbers it shows an increasing trend over the three years for which data has collected.