Notifiable Sexually Transmitted Infections in China: Epidemiologic Trends and Spatial Changing Patterns

Abstract

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have become one of the major public health threats to the sustainable development of human beings. Among all of the STIs in China, three are listed as the notifiable infectious diseases, i.e., gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV/AIDS, which demand more attention. This study aims to detect, describe, and compare the spatial-temporal clustering of these notifiable STIs in China and to relate spatial analysis results to epidemiologic trends during the past decade. A descriptive epidemiology analysis and a spatial autocorrelation analysis (global and local) are adopted to study the epidemiologic trends and spatial changing patterns of STIs respectively. The results indicated that there were regional disparities and spatial clusters in the spatial distribution of notifiable STIs in China. However, the incidence rates of the three notifiable STIs displayed relatively different characteristics in epidemiologic trends and the agglomeration level. Overall, the Yangtze River Delta region, the southwestern border area, and some other border regions are the places demanding more attention. In the end, we propose a three-dimensional prevention and control strategy, which focuses on not only the most-at-risk populations, but also the most-at-risk areas and most-at-risk timings. Besides, some measures targeting more than one STI should also be formulated.

Spatio-Temporal Epidemiology of Viral Hepatitis in China (2003–2015): Implications for Prevention and Control Policies

“…Health professionals are required to record and report viral hepatitis infections through the national infectious disease system within one day. There are institutionalized and standardized procedures to reexamine and check the results of first diagnosis and the final results will be collected by China CDC afterwards [ 13 ]. As mentioned above, China CDC only summarizes the reported cases of hepatitis A, B, C, E and unspecified to avoid duplicate counting of hepatitis B and D infections.…”

Notifiable Respiratory Infectious Diseases in China: A Spatial–Temporal Epidemiology Analysis

“…The value of Moran's I ranges from -1 to 1, where a 0 indicates that the RIDs cases are randomly distributed in space and no clusters are detected [26]. A value approaching 1 indicates the unit clusters with a similar value [27].…”

Spatio-temporal variations of licensed doctor distribution in China: measuring and mapping disparities

“…First, the units displaying low-low and low-high feature should be given priority in corresponding policy formulation. Compared with the spread of infectious diseases and air pollutants [38,39], licensed doctor distribution, affected by multiple geographical, economic, and social factors, shows distinctive spatial clustering features in different areas rather than a single pattern across the whole country. As far as policy planning is concerned, the government should pay extra attention to unit which displayed low-low and low-high cluster feature.…”