Description
- Abstract:
- While tuberculosis (TB) rates have been improving worldwide for decades, it remains a pervasive problem in Rwanda, a subtropical nation in Subsaharan Africa. Simultaneously, the rising climate crisis is affecting many aspects of daily life around the globe, including medicine. Rwanda has historically had a four-part annual pattern of seasons, with two dry (one long, one short) and two wet (similarly, one long and one short) seasons each year. Previous research has demonstrated that for a single large referral hospital in Kigali (Rwanda's capital), patients with TB tended to present more in the dry seasons than the rainy seasons in the years 2016-2017. However, the limitations of that study - namely, its years and location of focus - in addition to the increasing havoc wreaked across sectors by climate change necessitates a re-examination of these trends in order to better prepare hospitals and healthcare workers in Rwanda for patient influxes. By examining the rates of presentation of patients with TB to the emergency department (ED) at a different large district hospital in Kigali in more recent years (2022-2023), we demonstrate that the increasing variability in seasonality, as measured by monthly rainfall, have eliminated any pattern in seasonal presentation to the ED. Given that current rainfall patterns no longer seem to neatly reflect Rwanda's traditional four seasons and that TB is simultaneously still a pressing problem, these new findings of a lack of correlation between the two highlight the importance of increased resource allocation for TB treatment throughout the year, rather than confining such increases to solely the dry season.
- Notes:
- Scholarly concentration: Non-Scholarly Concentrator
Access Conditions
- Use and Reproduction
- All rights reserved
- Rights
- In Copyright
- Restrictions on Use
- All Rights Reserved
Citation
Heilbronner, Rachel, Risner, Caroline, Birahamire, Joseph, et al.,
"Tuberculosis in the Emergency Department: The Impact of Seasonal Variation on Infectious Disease in Rwanda"
(2024).
Warren Alpert Medical School Academic Symposium.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:xf96em8q/
Relations
Collection:
-
Warren Alpert Medical School Academic Symposium
The Warren Alpert Medical School Academic Symposium is an annual event at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University that provides Year II medical students a venue to present their summer research in a poster format. Participation in the Symposium …...