The magnitude of the global problem of acute diarrhoeal disease: a review of active surveillance data.

Data from 24 published studies were anlayzed in order to estimate the annual morbidity and mortality from acute diarrheal diseases in the developing world. 22 of the studies involved frequent surveillance through home visits to families in communities; the other 2 were multicountry studies in which diarrhea mortality was calculated on the basis of death certificate information. Morbidity rates were found to be highest in the 6-11 month age group, while the mortality rates were greatest in infants under 1 year of age and children 1 year old. For children under 5 years of age, the median incidence of diarhhea was 2.2 episodes/child/year for all studies and 3.0 episodes/child/year for the studies that had the smallest populations and most frequent surveillance. Using 1980 population estimates, the estimated total yearly morbidity and mortality from diarrheal diseases for children under 5 years of age in Africa, Asia (excluding China), and Latin America were 744-1000 million episodes and 4.6 million deaths. (author's)