Abstract
Pakistan is among the top countries with the highest tuberculosis (TB) burden in the world. This study aims to identify and visualize spatiotemporal clusters of TB cases in South Punjab Province Pakistan during 2016–2020. We obtained TB data from the national surveillance of the District Health Information System from January 2016 to December 2020. We applied space-time scan statistics using the Discrete Poisson model to identify and investigate spatiotemporal patterns of TB at the tehsil level, which is a subunit of districts, in the study area. The region consistently experienced many new tuberculosis cases with Multan as the highest reporting division. A purely temporal clustering pattern was observed from December 2017 to February 2020 with a relative risk (RR) of 1.21 (P < 0.001). However, purely spatial scanning identified two significant high-risk (P < 0.001) clusters of TB within the South Punjab region comprising 36.5% and 6.8% of total cases, respectively. The first spatial cluster was located in the central part of the region (RR = 1.69), while the second cluster was observed in the northern area (RR = 1.46). Interestingly, the most significant spatial–temporal cluster (RR = 1.80) was also identified in the central part of the region, comprising 26.8% of the total TB cases, with the temporal accumulation of cases from October 2017 to March 2020. Our study revealed significant space–time clusters at the tehsil level, based on which public health interventions and strategies can be tailored to address the specific needs of these regions, potentially leading to more effective TB prevention and control measures.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- TB:
-
Tuberculosis
- RR:
-
Relative risk
- LLR:
-
Log likelihood ratio
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Munazza Fatima: Conceptualization, investigation, methodology, formal analysis, visualization, and writing—review and editing.
Ibtisam Butt: Conceptualization, writing—review and editing.
Neda Firouraghi; Visualization; Writing—review and editing.
Maria Khalil; Writing—review and editing.
Behzad Kiani; Methodology, formal analysis, writing—review and editing.
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Fatima, M., Butt, I., Firouraghi, N. et al. Space-time analysis of tuberculosis (2016–2020) in South Punjab, Pakistan. GeoJournal 89, 1 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-024-11020-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-024-11020-x