187 Magnitude of lightening injury in Bangladesh- a nationally conducted survey findings

Background Lightning injury is a global public health concern mainly affecting rural inhabitants and people involve in farm work. Bangladesh is one of the countries where a high number of fatality occurs due to lightening. There is a lack of statistics explaining the magnitude of lightening injury in recent year in Bangladesh. This study explaining the magnitude of lightning injuries in Bangladesh, using data from Bangladesh Health and Injury survey 2016. Methodology Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey was conducted during March- June 2016 among 299,216 rural and urban populations by using multi stage cluster sampling method. Result 14 lightening cases were found in this study, among these cases 5 were ended with fatality and 9 were morbidity cases. The overall rate was 4.6 (95% CI 2.6–7.6) and the fatality rate was 1.7 (95% CI 0.6–3.7) per 100,000 populations. Rural residences were the main victims about 71% (n= 10) of the injured were rural residence. Of all injured 78.6% of the all victims were males and 57.1% (n=8) of the incidences were in the agricultural field. 71.4% of the (n=10) injured were adults. More than 78% (n=11) lightening injury occurred during February- May of the year. Only 28.6% of the injured south health care. Conclusions This research study indicates that annually a significant number of people die due to lightening in Bangladeshi. Adult male and rural populations are at risk. Further community based investigations and intervention is needed to be developed to reduce this avoidable burden in Bangladesh.