EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE AND BUILDING TOPOLOGY ON THE OCCURRENCE OF DENGUE FEVER

Abstract

Dengue fever is one of the most important endemic and epidemic diseases of Southeast Asia. It is one of the common mosquitos borne infectious disease of Singapore. DF cases are endemically present in Singapore with some major epidemics. Strict surveillance programs help to keep it down at endemic level but DF cases appeared rapidly at the start of 2016. Numbers of factors are involved in the cyclic reoccurrence of DF along with environmental factors and building topology. This study investigated the two factors (temperature and building topology) related to occurrence of DF. The first part is descriptive epidemiological study conducted to check the distribution of DF cases in different topologies typologies (HDB, Condominium and landed houses). Incidence rate in HDB, condominium and landed building topologies is, ~10, ~12 and ~91 People in a population of 10,000 people since from 1st January 2016 till 31st December.2016 Respectively. Second part of the study investigated the temperature by installation of HOBO meters in different topologies types. The average temperatures are 29.2⁰C, 28.3⁰C and 28.1⁰C in landed, condominium and HDB respectively. While 3rd part of study includes the statistical evaluation of the effect of temperature and topology which explains that temperature and topology could be contributory factors in the occurrence of DF. Further epidemiological, virological and entomological study is necessary to investigate these factors in detail along with other factors.