Quantifying the incidence of severe-febrile-illness hospital admissions in sub-Saharan Africa

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220371
• Publication Date: 2019-07-25T13:46:51Z
• Authors: Paul Roddy; Ursula Dalrymple; Tomas O. Jensen; Sabine Dittrich; V. Bhargavi Rao; Daniel A. Pfeffer; Katherine A. Twohig; Teri Roberts; Oscar Bernal; Ethan Guillen
• Keywords: Etiology

Severe-febrile-illness (SFI) is a common cause of morbidity and mortality across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The burden SFI in SSA currently unknown its estimation fraught with challenges. This due to lack diagnostic capacity for SSA, thus dearth baseline data on the underlying etiology cases scant SFI-specific causative-agent prevalence data. To highlight public health significance we developed Bayesian model quantify incidence hospital admissions SSA. Our estimates indicate mean population-weighted SFI-inpatient-admission rate 18.4 (6.8–31.1, 68% CrI) per 1000 people year 2014, all ages within areas stable Plasmodium falciparum transmission. We further estimated total 16,200,337 (5,993,249–27,321,779, admissions. analysis reveals significant hospitals but also highlights paucity pathogen-specific Future improvements diagnostics causative agents will increase abundance data, aid future estimations burden, enable clinicians identify pathogens, administer appropriate treatment management, facilitate antibiotic use.