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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Sadrivaan A and B (The Hilton Istanbul Hotel )
Objective: Anthrax is a notifiable disease in many countries including Turkey. Spatial statistics and spatial analysis methods those are included in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software’s modules, began to receive increasing attention. GIS have had a place in public health and epidemiologic investigations. Therefore, we aimed to explore presence of regional clustering of anthrax in Turkey, using explorative spatial analyses.
Material and Methods: The recorded anthrax cases (1989-2006) by Turkish Ministry of Health (totally 7145), and demographic data from Turkish Statistical Institute were used for analyses. Empirical Bayes smoothing is used to remove background noise from the raw disease rates because of the sparsely populated cities and the ones with small number of cases. To detect global variations and trends in the values of smoothed rates over the neighboring provinces, spatial rate smoothing based on spatial moving areas technique is performed. Spatial analyses, including local and global spatial autocorrelation methods were performed to the anthrax cases (1996-2006), to detect any trend or cluster for any particular provinces.
Results: There has been a decrease in the number of anthrax cases after the year 2001 according to the records. Spatial analyses of 4543 anthrax cases showed a trend towards to the eastern region of Turkey. Spatial analyses of the anthrax showed that the cases are not spatially random the eastern region of Turkey. Global spatial autocorrelation indices indicated significant clustering of Anthrax in the eastern region of Turkey (Moran’s I: 0.08 p<0.01, Geary’s C: 0.77 p<0.01).
Conclusion: This study shows that Anthrax is a serious public health concern in the especially eastern region of Turkey, and that region should have a priority to implement precautionary measures. It also shows that spatial analyses and statistics can contribute to understanding epidemiology of diseases, and identifying high rate disease locations.
Material and Methods: The recorded anthrax cases (1989-2006) by Turkish Ministry of Health (totally 7145), and demographic data from Turkish Statistical Institute were used for analyses. Empirical Bayes smoothing is used to remove background noise from the raw disease rates because of the sparsely populated cities and the ones with small number of cases. To detect global variations and trends in the values of smoothed rates over the neighboring provinces, spatial rate smoothing based on spatial moving areas technique is performed. Spatial analyses, including local and global spatial autocorrelation methods were performed to the anthrax cases (1996-2006), to detect any trend or cluster for any particular provinces.
Results: There has been a decrease in the number of anthrax cases after the year 2001 according to the records. Spatial analyses of 4543 anthrax cases showed a trend towards to the eastern region of Turkey. Spatial analyses of the anthrax showed that the cases are not spatially random the eastern region of Turkey. Global spatial autocorrelation indices indicated significant clustering of Anthrax in the eastern region of Turkey (Moran’s I: 0.08 p<0.01, Geary’s C: 0.77 p<0.01).
Conclusion: This study shows that Anthrax is a serious public health concern in the especially eastern region of Turkey, and that region should have a priority to implement precautionary measures. It also shows that spatial analyses and statistics can contribute to understanding epidemiology of diseases, and identifying high rate disease locations.
Learning Objectives: To explore presence of regional clustering of anthrax in Turkey, using explorative spatial analyses.
Sub-Theme: Public Health and Research: Evidence Based Policy on Health