Ejaz Mahmood Ahmad Qureshi, Amtul Bari Tabinda, Seemal Vehra.
Sero-surveillance of dengue in the city Lahore, Pakistan.
J Pak Med Assoc Jan ;67(8):1173-9.

Objective: To conduct sero-surveillance of dengue cases, and to find out the demographic and socio-economic status of dengue patients. Methods: This community-based, cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted at the Institute of Public Health, Lahore, Pakistan, from July to December each year in 2011, 2012 and 2013, and comprised patients suspected to have dengue. Blood samples of dengue patients in five randomly selected union councils of the 10 towns of the city were subjected to the dengue test. Information about demographic and socio-economic characteristics was obtained with the help of pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire. SPSS 16 was used for data analysis. Results: Of the 5,544 dengue patients, 5.263 (94.9%) patients were diagnosed in 2011, followed by 25(0.45%) and 256(4.6%) in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Sero-surveillance of these dengue patients in 2011 showed that on an average 3,094 (58.79%) cases had primary infection, 1,506 (28.61%) had old infection, while only 663 (12.6%) had secondary infection. Similar pattern was observed in 2012 and 2013. It was found that 2,379 (42.9%) participants were aged between 15-30 years and 2,203 (39.7%) between 31-45 years. Besides, 3,618 (65.3%) participants were males and 1,926 (34.7%) females. Also, 2,865 (51.4%) participants were labourers, 2,746 (49.5%) and 2,260 (40.7%) were educated up to primary and secondary levels, respectively. Although sporadic dengue cases were recorded from July to December, most of the cases were observed in late rainy and early post-rainy seasons. Conclusion: The incidence of dengue was highest in people of 15-45years of age, particularly males, labourers and those with low income.

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