Spatial Patterns Of Hand-Foot And Mouth Disease In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Background: Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease (HFMD) is most frequently caused by Enterovirus71 (EV-A71) or Coxsackie virus A16 (CV-A16), infants and young children are at greatest risk. Describing the spatial patterns of HFMD can help develop and better target interventions. The objective of this study is to identify spatial patterns of HFMD in the first 8-months of 2023 in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. Methods: The global Moran’s I statistic, Moran’s I scatterplot and local Moran’s I statistic and Boxplot will be applied to study spatial patterns of HFMD. Spatial patterns including spatial clusters (high-high and low-low) and spatial outliers (low-high and high-low) will be identified for HFMD cases and HFMD infection rates. Results: three high-high spatial clusters were mainly distributed in districts in the western region of the city such as Binh Tan, Binh Chanh, and Tan Phu. These high-high spatial clusters belonged to districts having the highest rates of HFMD infections in the city with their corresponding rates of 289, 283 and 281 cases/100,000 inhabitants, respectively. On the other hand, two low-low spatial clusters were detected in Districts 1 and 5 in the city center with their HFMD infection rates of 190 and 209 cases/100,000 inhabitants, respectively. Conclusions : findings in this study support the usefulness of boxplots, local and global Moran’s I statistics, and Moran’s I scatterplots in the identification of spatial clusters and spatial outliers of HFMD.