Fungal disease burden in another nine countries covering a further 490.5 million people has been estimated by LIFE collaborators. Data from Nepal and Thailand in  Asia, Canada, Ecuador and Chile from the Americas, Jordan and Egypt from the Middle East, and Indonesia and New Zealand from Oceania bring the total countries with fungal burden estimates, undertaken by LIFE to 47. As with prior burden estimates, around 2% of each country’s population have a serious fungal infection in any one year.

IMG_2056
Souha Kanj

Remarkable findings from these abstracts include:

  • High rate of asthma and probably ABPA prevalence in New Zealand, Egypt, Jordan and Chile (303/100,000, 162/100,000, 140.9/100,000 and 97.6/100,000 respectively).
  • Fungal keratitis is common in Nepal, Thailand and Egypt (19,938, 9,765 and 11,550 cases annually in each country) uncommon in New Zealand (31 cases) and could not be estimated in the other countries.
  • A high rate of disseminated histoplasmosis and cryptococcosis in Ecuador HIV patients, rates of 11.1% and 7% in those with low CD4 cell counts, which contrasts with low rates in Chile.
  • High rate of cryptococcal disease in Thailand, with 108 (3.9%), 2,389 (87%) and 251 (9.1%) cases in ‘normal’ people, AIDS and other immunocompromised patients respectively, contrasting with very low rates in New Zealand and Jordan.
  • Moderately high prevalence of chronic pulmonary aspergillosis after TB in Nepal (17.4/100,000), Indonesia (16/100,000) and Thailand (10/100,000) contrasting with low rates in Egypt (1.3/100,000), Chile (1.6/100,000), Canada (0.13/100,000) and an intermediate rate in Ecuador (4.3/100,000).
  • Relatively high frequency of tinea capitis in Jordan, comprising 34% of all documented dermatophyte infections.

Data

Asia

Nepal: Link to poster
Thailand: Link to poster 

Americas:

Canada: Link to poster
Ecuador: Link to abstract (poster to be presented at API on May 16th 2015)
Chile: Link to poster

Middle East

Jordan: Link to poster
Egypt: Link to poster

Oceania:

Indonesia: Link to poster (coming soon)
New Zealand: Link to poster (coming soon)