Sunil Vijay Junagade1, Shailaja Milind Potdar2, Jayesh Nareshchandra Panot3, Vandana Sanjay Kumavat4,Krutika Janardan Thakur5, Mohit Vijay Rojekar6, Sachidanand Kawade7
BACKGROUND
There are many mosquito-borne infections in the tropical countries including India. Dengue and malaria being the commonest. Despite this, coinfection with dengue fever are scarcely reported in literature and more so in children. Malaria and dengue are rampant illnesses with overlapping presentation. Both have high morbidity and mortality. Coinfection of dengue and malaria are seldom reported, especially in children. Authors wish to quantify the prevalence of this coinfection in this article.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Retrospective descriptive design was adopted and ethical committee approval was taken. Indoor record papers of paediatric patients admitted with suspected dengue fever in paediatric ward of RGMC between January to December 2016 were studied.
RESULTS
Out of 71 confirmed dengue cases, 18 were also positive for malaria (25.35%). Of these confirmed 18 malaria cases, 15 were P. vivax (83.33%) and 3 were P. falciparum (16.6%). The high number of coinfection cases that we got 25.35% suggests that the prevalence of coinfection of dengue and malaria is reasonably high.
CONCLUSION
Our study highlights the importance of need of awareness on the part of treating paediatricians of dengue coinfection in endemic areas. High index of suspicion should be maintained especially when one infection is found to proactively look for second infection.
