Epidemiological studies on gastroenteritis in children in the Bannu district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Khan, Muhammad Ashraf
Abstract	AimsGastroenteritis is a digestive disorder among children with symptoms of abdominal cramps, diarrhoea, and vomiting. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of gastroenteritis in children in the Bannu district in 2019, and also contributed for adopting preventive measures to reduce mortality in children.Subject and methodsA retrospective study was conducted to determine the prevalence of gastroenteritis in children in Bannu. The data were collected from official registers of admission maintained in the children wards in the Women and Children Hospital, Bannu. Patients with symptoms of gastroenteritis at the outpatient department were admitted to one of the children wards.ResultsOverall, 1456 children—897 (61.4%) males and 559 (38.6%) females—suffered from gastroenteritis during the study period. The age group ≤6 months demonstrated the highest share (37.8%), followed by >6 m ≤ 1y (35.5%), >1y ≤ 2y (15.8%), >2y ≤ 5y (7.3%), >5 ≤ 10y (3.2%), and > 10y ≤ 15y (0.4%). Overall, 89.1% of cases were from children ≤2 years old and 96.4% of cases were attributed to children ≤ 5 years of age. April demonstrated the highest percentage of prevalence of 17.7, followed by May (13.5%), November (13%), June (11.7%), September (10.4%), October (9.8%), July (9.5%), August (8.4%), March (3.4%), and February (2.6%). The age group ≤6 m was the dominant group during February through May and was replaced by the age group >6 m ≤ 1y during August through November.ConclusionGastroenteritis showed a reduced prevalence when shifted from lower to higher age groups. Being male and age group ≤6 m showed the highest prevalence of gastroenteritis with the peak of disease in April. Further research is needed to determine the cause-based prevalence of different gastroenteritis cases in the study area.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC8138957&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	21981833
Journal	Zeitschrift Fur Gesundheitswissenschaften [Z Gesundh Wiss]
Volume Number	31
DOI	10.1007/s10389-021-01592-0
PubMed Central reference number	PMC8138957
Issue Number	5
PubMed reference number	34036038
e-ISSN	16132238
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publisher Date	2021-05-21
Publisher Place	Berlin/Heidelberg
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021
Subject Keyword	Prevalence Gastroenteritis Children Bannu Age group
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Medicine