Durowade Kabir Adekunle
Department of Community Medicine, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria and Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido-Ekiti, Nigeria.
Niger Med J. 2023 Feb 24;63(5):340-347. eCollection 2022 Sep-Oct.
Rubella, (German measles) is vaccine-preventable and a viral disease of public health importance. It presents with mild febrile rash illness, attendant congenital sequel and foetal death. This paper seeks to do a review of the epidemiology of rubella in selected sub-Saharan African countries. This is a review of literatures involving data triangulation of rubella surveillance data. World Health Organization (WHO)rubella surveillance data (2015-2018) available online was used to present the seasonal/time-variation. Data was extracted from the site into Microsoft Excel over three months period (October-December, 2018). Univariate data analysis was done using SPSS-23 and data were presented with appropriate tables and charts to show the trend. Epidemiologic findings showed that periodicity of rubella varies across countries in Africa with seasonal variation across the four sub-regions. In the West Africa sub-region, sharp increases occurred in reported cases in January with peaks in March-April. In Nigeria, a West African country, available data showed that seasonal peak occurs in the first four months (Jan-April) of the year with most of the burden among those below fifteen years of age, affects both sexes and incidence cuts across both rural and urban areas. However, in the Central sub-region, spikes generally occur between February and March with troughs in September to November. In the East sub-region, dual peaks occur in March-April and in September-October; in the South sub-region, unique annual seasonality with few cases reported in January-June each year. The peak incidence of rubella has been observed to be a function of the seasonal peaks/variation in Africa. Therefore, the knowledge of this seasonal variation can be leveraged upon by Governments to control the disease through scaling up of awareness creation and surveillance during the identified peaks and beyond.
风疹（德国麻疹）是一种可用疫苗预防的病毒性疾病，对公共卫生具有重要意义。它表现为轻度发热性皮疹疾病，伴有先天性后遗症和胎儿死亡。本文旨在对撒哈拉以南非洲部分国家的风疹流行病学进行综述。这是一篇涉及风疹监测数据三角测量的文献综述。使用了世界卫生组织（WHO）在线提供的2015 - 2018年风疹监测数据来呈现季节性/时间变化。数据在三个月期间（2018年10月 - 12月）从该网站提取到Microsoft Excel中。使用SPSS - 23进行单变量数据分析，并以适当的表格和图表呈现数据以显示趋势。流行病学研究结果表明，非洲各国风疹的周期性各不相同，四个次区域存在季节性变化。在西非次区域，1月份报告病例急剧增加，3 - 4月达到峰值。在西非国家尼日利亚，现有数据显示季节性峰值出现在一年的前四个月（1月 - 4月），大多数负担集中在15岁以下人群，男女均受影响，发病率在农村和城市地区都有。然而，在中非次区域，高峰通常出现在2月至3月之间，9月至11月为低谷。在东非次区域，3 - 4月和9 - 10月出现双峰；在南部次区域，具有独特的年度季节性，每年1月至6月报告的病例较少。已观察到风疹的发病率峰值是非洲季节性高峰/变化的一个函数。因此，各国政府可以利用这种季节性变化的知识，通过在确定的高峰期间及之后加强宣传和监测来控制该疾病。
