Epidemic acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis in Belize

ABSTRACT

Acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis was first introduced into Belize in July 1981, during the course of a larger Caribbean epidemic. The index case apparently arrived by boat from Honduras. The disease spread rapidly from the coastal centers of Belize City and Dangriga, the first urban areas affected, and within two weeks all the districts in the country were reporting cases. Peak attack rates generally occurred about four weeks after the initial cases. Countrywide, government clinics reported 121 cases of acute hemorrhagic conjunctivities for every 1,000 inhabitants. Data from different census enumeration districts in Belize City indicated attack rates ranging from 0 to 417 cases per 1,000 inhabitants. Statistically significant correlations were observed between the Belize City data and other data on adult education and census district population size. The limited data available also suggest that the disease showed slight dependence upon conditions prevailing in the tropical coast-city environment that constitutes its typical setting. Instead, very similar epidemic patterns appear to have emerged in coast cities and inland farming areas; and the main factor limiting the outbreak appears to have been restrictions on the opportunities for the disease to suggests that the disease's decade-long absence from the Americas did not result from intrinsically unsuitable conditions, but rather from its lack of an effective introduction to the Region.(AU)