Profile of Pediatric Animal Bite Cases in Victoria Hospital, Bengaluru: A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Animal bite, usually dog bite is a significant public health problem in India. In India, every 30minutes,a life is lost due to rabies. There is an overall rate of 2 dog bites per second in India. The annual incidence of animal bite is more in children. India’s share is more than 36% of total rabies deaths. The incidence of animal bite/yr is 17.4 millions due to poor surviellence & inadequate legislation for compulsory notification of cases. OBJECTIVE: To determine the proportion and profile of pediatric animal bite cases attending Anti Rabies Clinic (ARC), Victoria hospital, Bengaluru. METHODS: Retrospective record based study from 22^nd January to 31^st December 2015 was conducted among children aged 0-18yrs in Victoria Hospital during January-February 2016.Study was analyzed using descriptive statistics and results represented in the form of figures, tables and proportion. RESULTS: Among 2856 animalbites,962 cases(33%) belonged to study group & 95.84% of them were dogbites.70.47% of animal bites belonged to category III and around 56% of animal bites were on upper limb of the study group. Only 253 cases (26.29%) visited Anti-Rabies Clinic on the day of bite. CONCLUSION: The proportion of pediatric animal bite cases is 33% which is significantly high and alarming too. Knowledge among public about the rabies and its outcomes is very less and most of them are unaware of its timely treatment with the availability of  immunoglobulins and vaccines