| 1. |
- Hansdotter, Frida I., et al.
(författare)
-
The incidence of acute gastrointestinal illness in Sweden
- 2015
-
Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Public Health. - : SAGE Publications. - 1651-1905 .- 1403-4948. ; 43:5, s. 540-547
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aims: The aim of this study was to estimate the self-reported domestic incidence of acute gastrointestinal illness in the Swedish population irrespective of route of transmission or type of pathogen causing the disease. Previous studies in Sweden have primarily focused on incidence of acute gastrointestinal illness related to consumption of contaminated food and drinking water. Methods: In May 2009, we sent a questionnaire to 4000 randomly selected persons aged 0-85 years, asking about the number of episodes of stomach disease during the last 12 months. To validate the data on symptoms, we compared the study results with anonymous queries submitted to a Swedish medical website. Results: The response rate was 64%. We estimated that a total number of 2744,778 acute gastrointestinal illness episodes (95% confidence intervals 2475,641-3013,915) occurred between 1 May 2008 and 30 April 2009. Comparing the number of reported episodes with web queries indicated that the low number of episodes during the first 6 months was an effect of seasonality rather than recall bias. Further, the result of the recall bias analysis suggested that the survey captured approximately 65% of the true number of episodes among the respondents. Conclusions: The estimated number of Swedish acute gastrointestinal illness cases in this study is about five times higher than previous estimates. This study provides valuable information on the incidence of gastrointestinal symptoms in Sweden, irrespective of route of transmission, indicating a high burden of acute gastrointestinal illness, especially among children, and large societal costs, primarily due to production losses.
|
|
| 2. |
- Lennell, Anne, et al.
(författare)
-
Alcohol-based hand-disinfection reduced children's absence from Swedish day care centers
- 2008
-
Ingår i: Acta Paediatrica. - Oslo : Taylor & Francis. - 0803-5253 .- 1651-2227. ; 97:12, s. 1672-1680
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim: To determine if the use of alcohol-based hand-disinfection as a complement to regular hand washing at daycare centers (DCCs) can reduce the childhood rate of absenteeism. Methods: Children aged 0–6 years attending DCC were studied in a cluster randomized controlled trial during 30 weeks. Thirty matched pairs of DCCs were included in the study, where one of the DCCs was randomized to intervention and the other to control within each pair. The intervention consisted in children and staff using alcohol-based oily disinfectant gel containing 70% ethanol after regular hand washing. The main outcome was the rate of episodes of absence from DCC due to infection. A regression model was fitted at the individual level and controlling several possible confounders for illness. Absences were reported by the parents. Results: Differences in missing absence reports between the two groups led to only evaluating those 29 DCCs (1431 children) that were able to provide complete reports. In the multivariate regression, the intervention significantly reduced the rate of absenteeism of a child by 12% compared to a child in a control DCC (IRR 95% CI: 0.799–0.965).
|
|
| 3. |
- Rehn, Moa, et al.
(författare)
-
Highest Vaccine Uptake after School-Based Delivery - A County-Level Evaluation of the Implementation Strategies for HPV Catch-Up Vaccination in Sweden
- 2016
-
Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 11:3
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background The Swedish school-based vaccination programme offers HPV vaccine to girls born >= 1999 in 5-6th grade. In 2012, all counties introduced free-of-charge catch-up vaccination campaigns targeting girls born 1993-1998. Varying vaccine uptake in the catch-up group by December 2012 suggested that some implementation strategies were more successful than others. In order to inform future vaccination campaigns, we assessed the impact of different implementation strategies on the county-level catch-up vaccine uptake. Methods We conducted an ecological study including all Swedish counties (n = 21), asking regional health offices about the information channels they used and where vaccination of the catch-up target group took place in their counties. The uptake of >= 1 dose by 30 September 2014 was estimated using data from the voluntary national vaccination register. We investigated associations between counties' catch-up vaccine uptake, information channels and vaccination settings by calculating incidence rate ratios (IRR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI), using negative binomial regression models. Results County level catch-up vaccine uptake varied between 49-84%. All counties offered vaccination through primary health care settings. Apart from this eight (34%) also offered the vaccine in some of their schools, four (19%) in all their schools, and two (10%) in other health care centres. The information channels most frequently used were: information at the national on-line health care consulting web-page (100%), letter/invitations (90%), and advertisement (81%). Counties offering vaccination to girls in all schools and counties offering vaccination in some of their schools, reached higher vaccine uptake compared to counties not offering vaccination in any of their schools (all schools adjusted IRR: 1.3, 95% CI: 1.1-1.5, some schools adjusted IRR: 1.2, 95% CI: 1.1-1.3). Conclusion Counties offering HPV vaccination to catch-up groups in schools reached the highest vaccine uptake. No information channel explained differences in county-level vaccine uptake. Our findings suggest that catch-up vaccination outside the national vaccination program can reach a high uptake at the population level if it is implemented primarily with an organized delivery (e.g. in schools).
|
|
