The hometowns of malaria patients admitted to King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, Bangkok.

We report the data on the hometowns of malaria patients admitted to King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, Bangkok, between 1997 and 2001. A total of 162 patients was identified. Of these, 62 lived in Bangkok; all presented with a history of travelling to endemic areas in rural Thailand. Among the other 100 patients who did not live in Bangkok, 15, 6, 10, 12, 21 and 19 were from the northern, southern, western, eastern, northeastern and central regions, respectively. All of these cases were referred or moved from the endemic area and admitted to the hospital. The remaining 17 cases were foreigners, 10 migrant workers (all from Asia) and 7 travelers (2 from Asia and 5 from Europe). According to this study, there were four main groups of patients admitted to the tertiary hospital in Bangkok: a) people in Bangkok exposed to malaria when travelling to an endemic area, b) people who were infected in their hometown in an endemic area and referred or moved to the hospital, c) migrant workers from nearby countries, who bring malaria from endemic areas in their countries, and d) naïve cases, such as the travelers from Western countries, who exposed to malaria while travelling in Thailand.