Epidemiology and surveillance of human animal-bite injuries and rabies post-exposure prophylaxis, in selected counties in Kenya, 2011-2016.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Human animal-bite injuries are a serious public health problem due to associated risk for rabies virus exposure. Animal-bite injuries especially dog bites are useful indicators for assessing the risk of rabies virus transmission and need for rabies post exposure prophylaxis (PEP). Understanding the epidemiology and surveillance of animal bites and rabies post-exposure prophylaxis is critical in implementing Kenya's national rabies elimination strategy. We aimed to describe the incidence of human animal-bite injuries, patient/biting animal characteristics, uptake of rabies PEP and factors associated with animal bite incidents. METHODS:We reviewed animal bite records from outpatient and anti-rabies vaccine (ARV) registers of 17 health facilities from five counties. An animal bite was defined as an entry of an animal bite of the class mammal including humans in registers in a person of any age from January 2011 to December 2016. We collected demographic and information on PEP uptake. We calculated descriptive statistics, odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) to examine factors associated with being an animal bite case-patient. We also calculated incidence of animal bites using health facility catchment population for year 2016 as the denominator. RESULTS:We analyzed 7307 records. The median age was 22 years (IQR?=?31 years); there were 4019 (55%) male and age?

SUBMITTER: Ngugi JN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6085719 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature