Epidemiological Profile of Malaria Cases admitted to a Tertiary Care Centre of Odisha

A record based study was conducted in a tertiary care centre of Odisha to know the socio-demographic and other epidemiological factors associated with the case fatality among the inpatient malaria cases admitted to medicine indoor. Total 557 laboratory confirmed malaria cases were studied. Majority of them (36%) belonged to 21-30 years age group and 85% were males. About 87% cases were from rural areas. More than 90% malaria cases were infected either by Plasmodium falciparum or by both P. falciparum and P. vivax. Among the complicated malaria cases, the most common complication was cerebral malaria (38%) followed by acute renal failure (ARF) (24%), hepatopathy (23%), both ARF and hepatopathy (11%), shock (4%) and algid malaria (1%). The overall case fatality rate was 10.6%. In complicated malaria, case fatality was significantly higher among female cases than male cases (35% vs 12%). Also the age specific case fatality rates in both the categories i.e. uncomplicated and complicated cases of malaria shows a gradual increase with the increase in age from <30 year, 30-50 year and >50 years age group.