Estimating the burden of acute gastrointestinal illness in the community in Gansu Province, northwest China, 2012–2013

Abstract

BackgroundAcute gastrointestinal illness (AGI) imposes considerable social and economic burden on low and middle-income countries. This study aimed to estimate the occurrence, distribution, and burden of self-reported AGI in Gansu Province of northwest China, where economic growth rates have lagged far behind those of other regions in China and systematic studies to investigate the burden of AGI are still lacking.MethodsTwelve-month, retrospective face-to-face surveys were conducted in three sentinel sites between June 2012 and May 2013. Respondents were asked if they had experienced diarrhoea or vomiting in the 28 days prior to the interview.ResultsIn total, 2094 interviews were completed. The adjusted monthly prevalence was 8.5% with an incidence rate of 1.16 episodes of AGI per person-year. Healthcare was sought by 73.8% of those reporting illness. Of the cases who visited a doctor, 50.5% submitted a stool sample. The use of antibiotics was reported by 65.6% of the cases and 53.3% took antidiarrhoeals. In the multivariable model, age, household income and sentinel site were significant risk factors of being a case of AGI.ConclusionsThe burden of AGI was considerable in Gansu Province of northwest China. Ongoing research to identify the main causes of AGI is needed for more accurate estimate of the burden of AGI in this region.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-787) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The correlation between family food handling behaviors and foodborne acute gastroenteritis: a community-oriented, population-based survey in Anhui, China

“…The monthly incidence of foodborne acute gastroenteritis recorded in the current study was 10.9%, which was higher than that reported in Italy (8.9%) [ 7 ], France (2.6%) [ 4 ], Japan (3.5%), Trinidad and Tobago (5.1%), and British Columbia, Canada (9.2%). In addition, the monthly incidence of foodborne acute gastroenteritis in the current study was greater than that previously reported in Jiangsu (4.4%) and Gansu (8.5%) [ 33 – 37 ] Provinces, China. Differences in illness prevalence may be related to exposure to risk factors, research design, and/or survey method.…”

Food Safety in Low and Middle Income Countries

“…The few studies on attribution of intestinal disease from LMICs mainly rely on self-reporting on the cause of disease, which is not very reliable. However, they suggest acute gastro-intestinal disease is common (around one in two people a year) and around one third of cases (12%–55%) are self-attributed to food [ 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ]. The WHO estimates that diarrhoeal diseases have a global burden of 99,727,954 DALYs and that 90% of these are the result of illness in lower income and lower middle-income countries [ 45 ].…”

Food safety in developing countries: an overview

“…Figure 4 (below) shows the foods implicated in FBD from three large, comprehensive national studies in the UK, USA and Netherlands, one small study in India, and one small, selfreported study from China (Painter et al, 2013;Sudershan et al, 2014;Mangen et al, 2014;Tam et al, 2012;Sang et al, 2014).…”

“…The studies that exist find acute gastro-intestinal disease is common (around one in two people a year) and around one third of cases (12-55%) were attributed to food (Bureau of Epidemiology, 2004;Ho et al, 2010;Chen et al, 2013;Sang et al, 2014 …”

“…A population based study in Gansu province estimated 30 million cases of acute intestinal illness occur each year, requiring 22 million medical consultations and 20 million courses of antibiotics. Just 400 cases were sent to the health reporting system (Sang et al, 2014).…”