Water outage increases the risk of gastroenteritis and eyes and skin diseases

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Chung-Ming Liu¹  Yu-Chun Wang²  Trong-Neng Wu³  Ling-Ya Huang³  Chin-Ching Wu³  Fung-Chang Sung⁴  Chang-Hung Chou⁵ 

[1] Department of Atmospheric Sciences, National Taiwan University, 106, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Bioenvironmental Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University, College of Engineering, 320, Chung Li, Taiwan;Department of Public Health, China Medical University, 404, Taichung, Taiwan;Department of Public Health, China Medical University, 404, Taichung, Taiwan;Institute of Environmental Health, National Taiwan University, 100, Taipei, Taiwan;Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, College of Life Science, China Medical University, 404, Taichung, Taiwan;

关键词: Gastroenteritis;    Daily Average Temperature;    Public Water Supply;    National Health Research Institute;    Central Weather Bureau;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-11-726

 received in 2011-04-13, accepted in 2011-09-25,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe present study used insurance claims data to investigate infections associated with short-term water outage because of constructions or pipe breaks.MethodsThe present study used medical claims of one million insured persons for 2004-2006. We estimated incidences of gastroenteritis and eye and skin complaints for 10 days before, during, and after 10 days of water supply restriction for outpatient visits and for emergency and in-patient care combined.ResultsThere was an increase in medical services for these complaints in outpatient visits because of water outages. Poisson regression analyses showed that increased risks of medical services were significant for gastroenteritis (relative risk [RR] 1.31, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.26-1.37), skin disease (RR 1.36, 95% CI 1.30-1.42), and eye disease patients (RR 1.34, 95% CI 1.26-1.44). Similar risks were observed during 10-day lag periods. Compared with those in cool days, risks of medical services are higher when average daily temperature is above 30°C for gastroenteritis (RR 12.1, 95% CI 6.17-23.7), skin diseases (RR 4.48, 95% CI 2.29-8.78), and eye diseases (RR 40.3, 95% CI 7.23-224).ConclusionWe suggest promoting personal hygiene education during water supply shortages, particularly during the warm months.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Huang et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.