Estimation of the Burden of Pandemic2009 in Developing Countries: Experience from a Tertiary Care Center in South India

Background The burden of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza might be underestimated if detection of the virus is mandated to diagnose infection. Using an alternate approach, we propose that a much higher pandemic burden was experienced in our institution. Methodology/Principal Findings Consecutive p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2012-09, Vol.7 (9), p.e41507
Main Authors: Moorthy, Mahesh, Samuel, Prasanna, Peter, John Victor, Vijayakumar, Saranya, Sekhar, Dipika, Verghese, Valsan P, Agarwal, Indira, Moses, Prabhakar D, Ebenezer, Kala, Abraham, Ooriapadickal Cherian, Thomas, Kurien, Mathews, Prasad, Mishra, Akhilesh C, Lal, Renu, Muliyil, Jayaprakash, Abraham, Asha Mary
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comparative analysis
Developing countries
Epidemics
Health aspects
India
Influenza
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Summary:Background The burden of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza might be underestimated if detection of the virus is mandated to diagnose infection. Using an alternate approach, we propose that a much higher pandemic burden was experienced in our institution. Methodology/Principal Findings Consecutive patients (n = 2588) presenting to our hospital with influenza like illness (ILI) or severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) during a 1-year period (May 2009-April 2010) were prospectively recruited and tested for influenza A by real-time RT-PCR. Analysis of weekly trends showed an 11-fold increase in patients presenting with ILI/SARI during the peak pandemic period when compared with the pre-pandemic period and a significant (P
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0041507