Summary
Spatial
analysis is making an increasingly important contribution to surveillance
measures due to its ability to enable immediate visualization of
information on the phenomenon studied. The authors describe the
spatial distribution of prevalence and incidence of brucellosis
in small ruminants in Sicily between 2001 and 2005. The study was
conducted by integrating geographic information systems (GIS) technology
(MapInfo Professional 7.0) with SaTScan™ software to perform
an epidemiological analysis of the municipalities and to locate
problem areas. A comparison between the thematic maps produced for
brucellosis in small ruminants on the basis of prevalence and incidence
data for each individual year has shown that in terms of prevalence,
the area identified as the secondary cluster in 2001 became the
primary cluster from 2002 onwards whereas, in terms of incidence,
the distribution of the clusters was irregular throughout the entire
region during the years studied.
Keywords
Brucellosis,
Geographic information system, Incidence, Prevalence, Sicily, Small
ruminant, Spatial analysis.
|