OBJECTIVES : Tropical diseases subsume all diseases occurring solely or mainly in tropical regions. Those diseases are often neglected and pose a significant burden among the healthcare systems of these regions. Therefore, our study aims to assess the epidemiological trends and exploratory disease burden indicators of four infectious diseases: dengue, tuberculosis, zika and chikungunya in Colombia.

METHODS : Data on cases, hospitalizations and mortality of tropical diseases across the 2014–2018 period was extracted from the SIVIGILA (Epidemiological Surveillance System) database, which contains the registry of diseases subjected to mandatory notification in Colombia. Yearly incidence rate, hospitalization rate and case fatality rate were estimated and compared during the analyzed period.

RESULTS : The average yearly incidence rates for dengue, tuberculosis, zika and chikungunya were 72.12, 29.30, 40.30 and 33.31 cases per 100,000 people; the average yearly hospitalization rates were 48.19%, 51.48%, 9.79%, 9.79% and the average yearly case fatality rates were 2.97, 80.47, 2.84 and 1.05 deaths per 1000 cases, respectively. Overall, viral diseases (dengue, zika and chikungunya) experienced a steep rise on weekly incidence rates in 2015 – 2016, which coincides with their outbreak dates in Latin America. Tuberculosis incidence rates maintained constant throughout the analyzed period; zika and chikungunya rates are decreasing over time and dengue rates are experiencing a steady increase recently. Furthermore, there are subgroups among diseases with significantly different impacts on burden indicators. For example, the average yearly hospitalization rate of severe dengue is 94.1% whereas that of mild to moderate dengue is 48.1%. Similarly, the average yearly case fatality rate of meningitis tuberculosis is significantly greater than the ones of pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis: 267.24, 71.00 and 73.87 deaths per 1000 cases, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS : Real-World Data (RWD) can be a powerful tool for early outbreak detection and healthcare resource allocation for tropical diseases in Latin America.