Spatiotemporal distribution of classical swine fever in Cuba, 2007 - 2013

Abstract

Classical swine fever (CSF) is an endemic disease in Cuba with significant economic impact on the swine industry, not only for the animal losses, but also for the operating expenses of the national coverage control program (technical staff, surveillance, diagnosis, vaccines, disinfectants, etc.). For implementing more effective control and eradication measures, the epidemiological analysis is necessary for a better understanding of the disease spatial and temporal distribution. With this aim, it was used the information about municipalities with CSF outbreaks during a seven-year period (2007-2013) registered by the Epizootiological Surveillance System. The spatiotemporal scan statistics analysis was performed; a Bernoulli probabilistic model was used to detect clusters of outbreak occurrence. Also, a temporal analysis was made through logistic regression. Three significant clusters (p<0.05) of high rates were detected, two of them from 2007 to 2009 with relative risks (RR) of 1.99 and 1.8, respectively. The third cluster had a RR=2.46 in 2008. Also two low rates clusters were observed, the first with a RR= 0.08 from 2009 to 2011, and the second with a RR= 0.43 from 2011to 2012. Furthermore, a tendency to a decreasing percentage of affected municipalities was observed in the studied period; a low risk of the municipalities to be affected were observed in 2011 (OR: 0.518, 0.332-0.809, I.C. 95%, p=0.004) and 2012 (OR: 0.577, 0.371-0.897, I.C 95%, p=0.015). Finally, to investigate the factors associated with the clusters of disease outbreak occurrence is the next step to progress in the CSF control and eradication campaign in the country.

Key words: Classical swine fever, Cuba, spatiotemporal distribution, clusters, tendency.