Syed Fazal Shah, Shazia Nadeem, Abdulaziz Farooq, Abdulbari Bener.
Emerging trend in the epidemiology of meningitis in Qatar.
J Coll Physicians Surg Pak Jan ;18(4):259-60.

Present study aimed to evaluate the epidemiological and etiological characteristics of meningitis disease in Qatar from 2000 to 2006. It was a retrospective study to identify the incidence of meningitis cases of different etiology reported from all over the country during the year 2000-2006. The study was conducted at the CDC Section in NHA, Doha-Qatar with the cooperation of Hamad General Hospital, which acts as a tertiary referral hospital in the country. The cases of meningitis were etiologically classified as bacterial [Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), Streptococcus pneumoniae (SP), Neisseria meningitis (NM)] or viral [aseptic]. For meningitis surveillance, WHO guidelines were used for defining the suspected, probable and confirmed cases.3 The criteria for definite diagnosis of cultureproven cultureproven bacterial meningitis and established procedures were followed.1 During the period 2000-2006, a total of 365 cases of meningitis were notified. When compared with gender, incidence of meningitis among males was higher 233 (63.8%) while females were 132 (36.2%) except in the cases of Hib meningitis where gender distribution was equal. The incidence of Hib meningitis was restricted to the age group 0-4 years. Both SP and aseptic meningitis incidence showed a decline with increasing age. The decline was noticed after the age of 4 years for SP meningitis and after 15 years for aseptic meningitis. Whereas the NM, other bacterial and unspecified meningitis remained uniformly distributed in all age groups except in infants (<1 year) where it was significantly high.

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