PREVALENCE STUDY OF DENGUE AND MALARIA COINFECTION IN TERTIARY CARE REFERRAL HOSPITAL IN THANE

Abstract

BACKGROUND
 There are many mosquito-borne infections in the tropical countries including India. Dengue and malaria being the commonest.
 Despite this, coinfection with dengue fever are scarcely reported in literature and more so in children. Malaria and dengue are
 rampant illnesses with overlapping presentation. Both have high morbidity and mortality. Coinfection of dengue and malaria are
 seldom reported, especially in children. Authors wish to quantify the prevalence of this coinfection in this article.
 MATERIALS AND METHODS
 Retrospective descriptive design was adopted and ethical committee approval was taken. Indoor record papers of paediatric
 patients admitted with suspected dengue fever in paediatric ward of RGMC between January to December 2016 were studied.
 RESULTS
 Out of 71 confirmed dengue cases, 18 were also positive for malaria (25.35%). Of these confirmed 18 malaria cases, 15 were
 P. vivax (83.33%) and 3 were P. falciparum (16.6%). The high number of coinfection cases that we got 25.35% suggests that
 the prevalence of coinfection of dengue and malaria is reasonably high.
 CONCLUSION
 Our study highlights the importance of need of awareness on the part of treating paediatricians of dengue coinfection in endemic
 areas. High index of suspicion should be maintained especially when one infection is found to proactively look for second
 infection.