JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Chickenpox is the primary infection of Varicella-Zoster Virus (VZV), that is highly contagious disease. The main goal of this epidemiological descriptive study is to analyze the medical chickenpox data from 2013 until 2020 in Jordan. This study aims to make a deep statistic through whole Jordan cities comparing with the year semesters for these years, with comparisons of gender and age categories. In addition, to get the status of Epidemiological situation in Jordan with concern of the effects of Syrian refuge and covid19 epidemic.

Objective:

The main goal of this epidemiological descriptive study is to analyze the medical data based on chickenpox from 2013 until 2020 in Jordan. This study aims to make a deep statistic of this disease through whole Jordan cities comparing with the year semesters for these years, with comparisons of gender and age categories. In addition, to get the status of Epidemiological situation in Jordan with concern of the effects of Syrian refuge and covid19 epidemic.

Methods:

The type of this study is the epidemiological descriptive. And the data of Children under 15 years old is the goal category, which collected clinically diagnosis by doctors. Chickenpox data comes to Ministry of Health as computerized and manual weekly report from public and private health centers and hospitals. To analyze this data, (SPSS) will be used for statistical analysis.

Results:

The total number of cases was reported of 40988 cases by year 2013 to 2020 in Jordan. There was an obvious rise in 2014 with possibly outbreaks as the reason of Syrian refuge with percent of 19.24%, while the lowest number got in 2020 since of covid19 pandemic and the quarantine the occurred in Jordan and especially closing schools and clinicals with percent 2.44%. Although the total number of chickenpox varied from 2013 - 2020 but all had shown the same seasonal distribution, being highest in spring (especially May) season with percent 16.12%. Geographic distribution showed that the highest number was in cities of Amman and Zarqa respectively with percent 18.15% and 12.81%, according to highest population and gatherings. In gender distribution has shown sustained preponderance for the males over females with percent 54.48% for males. Age category of (5 – 9 years) is the highest one would affect by this disease with percent 43.34%. The reason of that this category is for young children who newly enter the school and interact with others. However, the (More than 20 years) age category of adults has the lowest with percent 3.98%. More concerns in Mafraq city (that has the greatest number of Syrian refuge), we noticed that age categories (1 – 4 years) and (less than 1 year) have more infected than others.

Conclusions:

The conclusion results out of the analysis showed possibly outbreaks happened in 2014, and the lowest number of cases occurred in 2020. In addition, that Spring season is the most infected cases by the disease. Chickenpox, a highly transmissible childhood disease that becomes more severe with age in Jordan especially with category of (5 – 9 years) age. Moreover, gender distribution of the cases throughout the years has shown sustained preponderance for the males over females. And according to highly populations in Amman and Zarqa cities, they had the most infected chickenpox disease.