[Morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases at the Military Hospital of Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire].

OBJECTIVES: To determine the proportion of infectious diseases and their lethality at the Abidjan Military Hospital.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study examined the medical files of patients hospitalized in the internal medicine unit of the hospital during 2004.

RESULTS: The study included 668 patients with 855 diseases, 579 of them infectious (67.7%). The prevalence of HIV in this population was 41.3%. The main diseases observed were pneumonia (150 cases; 17.5%), malaria (82 cases; 9.6%), oropharyngeal candidiasis (83 cases; 9.7%), and tuberculosis (54 cases; 6.3%). The immediate causes of death were cerebral toxoplasmosis (27 cases; 39%), pneumopathy (25 cases; 36%), severe malaria (7 cases; 10%), tuberculosis (6 cases; 9%), and bacterial meningitis (5 cases; 7%). The prevalence of HIV infection prevalence among those who died of an infectious disease was 74.3%.

CONCLUSION: Infectious diseases are the main pathologies seen in the internal medicine department of the in Abidjan Military Hospital. They were mainly opportunistic infections linked to AIDS. The creation of a laboratory of infectious microbiology and of a medical intensive care unit appears necessary to optimize management of these infectious diseases.