[A surveillance on acute respiratory infection]

History prospective methods were employed in this surveillance on acute respiratory infection (ARI) in four villages in Ping Yi and Gao Mi counties. One thousand-one hundred-and sixty four households, 4,379 individuals with 4365.92 person-years were followed up for ARI. The incidence of ARI was 0.4542 episodes/person-year and the household incidence rate was 68.99%. No death case of ARI occurred during the surveillance period. Of all the 18 ARI diseases under surveillance the three diseases with highest incidence were common cold, upper respiratory tract infection and bronchitis. These three diseases all showed obvious family clustering tendency. The incidence of ARI was highest in children under 1 year of age (1.3403 episodes/person year), followed by 2-6 year age-group. The lowest was in 20-29 year age-group (0.2885 episodes/person-year). There was no significant difference between sexes. The ARI incidence in spring (0.18024 episodes/person-season) was higher than in other seasons, with the peak between March and April. The hospital attending rate was 90.07%. Among the patients, 80.05% received antibiotics, 13.06% received hormone, 2.10% received intravenous rehydration. ARI accounted for 24.83% of all the out-patients in township hospitals, 19.05%, of which were preschool children. For these children, 70.78% were using antibiotics, 23.31% using hormone, 10.06% using intravenous rehydration. Of the patients, the risk factors of ARI included low birth weight, difficult labour, malnutrition, illiteracy, low income, poor ventilation and lighting of the living room, poor living condition and cigarette smoking. The results presented will be of great significance to policy-making of ARI control in Shandong Province.