Trend of animal bites and related ecological factors in Jahrom county during 2014-2018

Animal bites are one of the health threats that can cause transmission of zoonotic diseases such as rabies to humans. The aim of this study was to determine the incidence of animal bites and related ecological factors in Jahrom county.

This retrospective descriptive study was performed on 3913 cases of people with animal bites from April 2014 to March 2016 in Jahrom county. The collected data were analyzed using chi-square test and Pearson correlation coefficient. The Cochran–Armitage test was also performed to evaluate the trend changes in the incidence rate using Winpepi software.

The mean age of the victims was 31.4 ± 1.7 years and the frequency of men (79.6%) was significantly higher than women (p <0.05). Most of the victims were from rural (56.2%) and in terms of occupation, the highest frequency was related to other (48.6%) and students (13.7%), respectively. The frequency of bites was 71.8% in day and in 72.3% of the attacking animals was dogs. The total incidence was 1,716 cases per 100,000 people. There was no correlation between average temperature, total monthly rainfall, average humidity and vegetation cover with the number of animal bites (p <0.05).

Due to the high incidence of animal bites in Jahrom, it seems necessary to perform basic measures such as training at-risk groups, strengthening the survilance system and immunization program.