Hospitalisation due to infectious and parasitic diseases in District Civil Hospital, Belgaum, Karnataka.

To assess the burden of infectious and parasitic diseases on hospital services at District Civil Hospital (DCH) Belgaum, a retrospective study was carried out using discharge records concerning 8506 inpatients due to infectious and parasitic diseases among 95,655 patients admitted for all causes during the reference period 2000-2003. Out of the 21 causes of infectious and parasitic diseases, only 5 contributed maximally towards hospital admission. The most frequent cause was intestinal infections (44.0%) followed by tuberculosis (35.4%). 57.5% of these admissions were from the productive age group of 20-54 years. Tuberculosis is the most important disease in terms of hospital bed days (59.7%). Tuberculosis and intestinal infectious diseases represent more than three-fourth of the overall burden in terms of hospital bed days.