Environmental and sociodemographic risk factors associated with environmentally transmitted zoonoses hospitalisations in Queensland, Australia

J Cortes-Ramirez; D Vilcins; P Jagals; R J Soares Magalhaes

doi:10.1016/j.onehlt.2020.100206

Environmental and sociodemographic risk factors associated with environmentally transmitted zoonoses hospitalisations in Queensland, Australia

One Health. 2020 Dec 17:12:100206. doi: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2020.100206. eCollection 2021 Jun.

Authors

J Cortes-Ramirez¹, D Vilcins², P Jagals², R J Soares Magalhaes^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
² Children's Health and Environment Program, Child Health Research Centre, The University of Queensland, South Brisbane 4101, Queensland, Australia.
³ Spatial Epidemiology Laboratory, School of Veterinary Science, The University of Queensland, Gatton, 4343, QLD, Australia.

Abstract

Zoonoses impart a significant public health burden in Australia particularly in Queensland, a state with increasing environmental stress due to extreme weather events and rapid expansion of agriculture and urban developments. Depending on the organism and the environment, a proportion of zoonotic pathogens may survive from hours to years outside the animal host and contaminate the air, water, food, or inanimate objects facilitating their transmission through the environment (i.e. environmentally transmitted). Although most of these zoonotic infections are asymptomatic, severe cases that require hospitalisation are an important indicator of zoonotic infection risk. To date, no studies have investigated the risk of hospitalisation due to environmentally transmitted zoonotic diseases and its association with proxies of sociodemographic and environmental stress. In this study we analysed hospitalisation data for a group of environmentally transmitted zoonoses during a 15-year period using a Bayesian spatial hierarchical model. The analysis incorporated the longest intercensal-year period of consistent Local Government Area (LGA) boundaries in Queensland (1996-2010). Our results showed an increased risk of environmentally transmitted zoonoses hospitalisation in people in occupations such as animal farming, and hunting and trapping animals in natural habitats. This risk was higher in females, compared to the general population. Spatially, the higher risk was in a discrete set of north-eastern, central and southern LGAs of the state, and a probability of 1.5-fold or more risk was identified in two separate LGA clusters in the northeast and south of the state. The increased risk of environmentally transmitted zoonoses hospitalisations in some LGAs indicates that the morbidity due these diseases can be partly attributed to spatial variations in sociodemographic and occupational risk factors in Queensland. The identified high-risk areas can be prioritised for health support and zoonosis control strategies in Queensland.

Keywords: Bayesian spatial hierarchical model; Emerging infectious diseases; Integrated nested Laplace approximation; Local government areas; Spatial adjacency matrix; disease mapping decision rules.