Drinking Water Quality and the Geospatial Distribution of Notified Gastro-Intestinal Infections

GRILC, Eva; GALE, Ivanka; VERŠIC, Aleš; ŽAGAR, Tina; SOCAN, Maja

The burden of diseases caused by food-borne and waterborne pathogens remains largely unknown globally, but it is probably high. For example, diarrhea associated with infections resulting from oral-fecal contamination is the second leading cause of death in children under 5 years of age, primarily in Africa and South Asia (2) . A number of diarrhea studies have been carried out in different countries. For instance, in Germany, a nationwide representative cross-sectional telephone survey of 21262 adults over a 12-month period during 2008 and 2009, was conducted. Participants were asked if they had had either AGI-related diarrhea or vomiting in a 4-week recall period. The burden of diarrhea was estimated to be quite high: 0.95 episodes/person per year (95% confidence interval 0·90-0·99) (3) . In Slovenia, a population-based self-reported acute gastrointestinal infection (AGI) cross sectional study was carried out in June 2011. The comparison of the incidence of AGI-based on notification in June 2011, and incidence-based on the results of the study showed that the latter incidence was 56 times higher than the first one. The burden of AGI among population of Slovenia is quite high. The cross sectional study should be repeated and laboratory analysis of acute AGI cases added to get a better insight of epidemiological situation (4).