Introduction:

Malaria is a health problem in Colombia. Its behavior is endemic / epidemic and variation is observed between the different transmission areas.

Objective:

Describe the epidemiological characteristics of patients with malaria notified by a health insurer in Colombia during the years 2016 and 2017.

Methods:

A descriptive study was conducted in which a retrospective review was performed of the database of all the malaria cases notified by a health insurer in Colombia during the years 2016 and 2017. A descriptive analysis was done taking into account the nature of the variables. Qualitative variables were analyzed in terms of absolute and relative frequencies. The chi-square test was used to compare the differences between proportions. A value of p< 0.05 was set as significant in all cases. The software SPPS version 19 was used for data analysis.

Results:

During the observation period a total 26 017 malaria cases were notified, of whom 50% were men (13 014) and 50% were women (13 003). The most affected age groups were young adults (26.37%), schoolchildren (15.04%), pre-schoolers (12.75%) and preadolescents (12.18%). Most of the patients studied were indigenous and mulatto, unskilled workers, and lived or were notified in the department of Chocó. With respect to clinical and paraclinical characteristics, it was found that 95.9% of the patients were symptomatic. The most common parasite species were P. falciparum (58.86%) and P. vivax (35.95%) and to a lesser degree P. malariae (0.06%). Complications were recorded in 410 patients. These were mainly hematological (56.3%), but brain, kidney, liver and lung complications were also found. During the two study years, epidemic outbreaks were observed between weeks 6 and 31, followed by a decrease in the number of case notifications.

Conclusions:

The study found a marked difference in the incidence of malaria cases notified by the study insurer between the years 2016 and 2017. Most of these cases were due to P. falciparum and were recorded in the department of Chocó.

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