Objective: To describe the epidemiologic characteristics of injury cases at Bugando Medical Centre.
Setting: Bugando Medical Centre, Mwanza, Tanzania.
Data sources: Records, registries and case notes in the surgical wards and clinic, casualty, medical record department, radiology and theatre from January 1995 to December 1997.
Study sample: Cases attended to at Bugando and diagnosed to have had an injury during the stated period. Only those whose records were complete and available were recruited in the study.
Data extraction: A special data sheet was used to collect the required information from the registries in surgical wards clinic, casualty, theatre, radiology and medical records. Data analysis was Dbase IV and SPSS (version 9.0).
Results: There were 3,590 cases of injury recorded at the centre of whom 3340 (93%) whose data were complete were available for analysis. Of the cases, 2,443 (73.1%) were males and 897 (26.9%) females while 252 (7.7%) were children under five years. The most affected age group were the 20-59 year category comprising of mostly males. The leading causes of injuries were falls, assault (28.7%) and motor traffic accidents (17.9%). Mortality was (2.2%) for all causes, and permanent disability was two per cent. The mean length of stay in hospital was 21 days (range: 1-321 days).
Conclusion: A more comprehensive study isrecommended to determine risk factors and magnitude of the problem.