Abstract

Introduction: Acute febrile illness (AFI) is defined as a patient with fever of 38°C or higher
at presentation or history of fever that persisted for 2-14 days with no localizing source. Fever
is the main clinical symptom of various tropical infectious diseases [1].
Materials and Methods: This is a Prospective and observational study was conducted at
Paediatric Department, Gayatri Vidya Parishad Institute of Health Care and Medical
Technology over a period of 1 year. Acute febrile illness (AFI) is defined as a patient with
fever of 38°C or higher at presentation or history of fever that persisted for 2-14 days with no
localizing source. Details of history and results of a thorough physical examination were
entered on a standard data collection sheet.The routine baseline investigations included
complete blood count analysis, serum electrolytes, liver and renal function tests.
Result: In this study typhoid fever was the most common cause of undifferentiated fever
(28.3%) followed by malaria (21.6%), dengue fever (19.1%), Acute gastroenteritis (14.1%),
Pneumonia (9.1%), Bronchiolitis (5.0%), Hepatitis (1.6%) and Pharyngotonsillitis
(0.8%%). Treatment-Enteric fever was treated with Ceftriaxone. Chloroquine was used for
treatment of Malaria. Dengue was treated symptomatically and with fluids according to
Dengue protocol. If fever persisted even after 6 days of antibiotics, then Azithromycin was
added. In the undiagnosed fever category, received empirical antibiotics.
Conclusion: A high prevalence of Typhoid, malaria and dengue in this study. The overlap
probably reflects an undefined level of previous infections, cross reactivity and subclinical
infections in the population, rather than high prevalence of coinfections.