Resumen

SEUC, Armando H et al. Burden of bacterial meningitis in Cuba in 2000. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2008, vol.34, n.2. ISSN 0864-3466.

Introduction Bacterial meningitis is one of the infectious diseases with higher social impact in Cuba, mainly in the child and young populations. Estimating the burden of this disease based on disability-adjusted years of life is important to monitor its behaviour and to evaluate the impact of several actions to prevent and treat it. Objectives To estimate the morbidity and mortality burdens of bacterial meningitis in the country in 2000, and to compare these estimations with the preliminary estimations by WHO. Methods WHO estimation procedures for Global Burden of Diseases studies were used. Mortality and incidence data were taken from domestic sources. Time discount and age weighing were not considered in this paper. Morbidity burden was obtained for three different variants, based on the use or non use of a software to validate epidemiological indicators for burden calculations and on the inclusion or exclusion of the disease sequelae. Results The mortality burden was almost 1.4 times that of morbidity. In this latter, the burden of sequelae was eighty times higher than the burden by type of meningitis. The achieved results were similar to the preliminary estimations for Cuba made by WHO in the year 2000. Conclusions It was evident that creating and keeping records of incidence and duration of bacterial meningitis sequelae is fundamental. This paper is the first conducted in Cuba that estimated the burden of this disease and created the conditions for estimating the burden for coming years, broken down by province, sex and age

Palabras clave : Bacterial meningitis; burden of disease; epidemiology.