The Nouna Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) is located in rural Burkina Faso and has existed since 1992. Currently, it has about 78,000 inhabitants. It is a member of the International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health in Developing Countries (INDEPTH), a global network of members who conducts longitudinal health and demographic evaluation of...

Surgical site infections (SSIs) account for 11% of nosocomial infections among older patients. This report reviews the available data and presents medical and surgical perspectives on the epidemiology, outcomes, and prevention of SSI in the elderly population. The risk for SSI does not seem to increase after the age of 65 years. Several risk factors for SSI are similar among elderly patients an...

BACKGROUND Most epidemiological and clinical reports on snake envenoming focus on a single country and describe rural communities as being at greatest risk. Reports linking snakebite vulnerability to socioeconomic status are usually limited to anecdotal statements. The few reports with a global perspective have identified the tropical regions of Asia and Africa as suffering the highest levels o...

BACKGROUND Advances in the care of burn injuries have resulted from the efforts of regional patient-based specialist teams at burn care centers. OBJECTIVES We conducted this study to assess the four-year epidemiology of burn injuries in Rasht, Iran. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this cross-sectional study, medical records of 2274 burn patients, treated at Velayat hospital from January 2007 to De...

To examine long-term trends in subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) mortality and morbidity, an analysis of routinely available information is presented for the 20 year period from 1959. To document the current incidence and case fatality of SAH, the results of a large scale community-based study in the Auckland region are presented. SAH mortality rates for both men and women, especially women, have d...

A second epidemiological study of multiple sclerosis (MS) in north-east Scotland has confirmed that the area has the highest prevalence rate in the world for any population of comparable size. On 1 December 1973 the prevalence was 144 per 100000 population. The age and sex specific prevalence rates are the highest ever recorded, one in every 306 of the population aged 40 to 59 years being affec...

The "fetuses at risk" concept of gestational-age-specific mortality proposed by Yudkin et al. (Lancet 1987;1:1192-4) and extended by various researchers is becoming popular in perinatal and pediatric epidemiology. However, the definitions using this concept have led to a puzzling phenomenon in which mortality rates appear to increase monotonically with advancing gestational age. While proponent...

From as early as the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1930’s , New Zealand’s infant mortality was one of the lowest in the World. The unique background conditions of New Zealand determined some of the initial advantage in the survivorship of infants in the first year of life relative to other European countries. This advantage then persisted into the twentieth century. The nature and ...

The perinatal mortality rate remains a public health problem, demanding epidemiological studies to describe its magnitude and time trends, identify risk factors, and define adequate interventions. There are still methodological controversies, resulting in heterogeneous studies and possible biases. In Brazil, there has been a growing scientific output on this theme, mainly in the South and South...