Evaluation of Neighborhood Socio-Economic Status, as Measured by the Delphi Method, on Dengue Fever Distribution in Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Dengue fever, a mosquito-transmitted viral disease, is present in many neighborhoods in Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia. One factor likely to affect its distribution is the socio-economic status of local neighborhoods; however, the absence of socio-economic census data in Saudi Arabia has precluded detailed investigation. This study aims to develop a proxy measure of socio-economic status in Jeddah City in order to assess its relationship with the occurrence of dengue fever. The Delphi method was used to assess the socio-economic status (high, medium or low) of local neighborhoods in Jeddah City. A Geographic Information System (GIS) was applied to understand the distribution of dengue fever according to the socio-economic status of Jeddah City neighborhoods. Low-socio-economic status neighborhoods in south Jeddah City, with poor environmental conditions and high levels of poverty and population density, reported most cases of dengue fever. Nevertheless, dengue continues to increase in high socio-economic status neighborhoods in the northern part of the city, possibly due to ideal breeding conditions caused by the presence of standing water associated with high levels of construction. Moreover, the low-socioeconomic-status neighborhoods had the highest average number of cases, being 3.95 times that of high-status neighborhoods for the period 2006–2009. The Delphi approach can produce a useful and robust measure of socio-economic status for use in the analysis of patterns of dengue fever. Results suggest that there are nuances in the relationship between socio-economic status and dengue that indicate that higher status areas are also at risk. A useful additional tool for researchers in Saudi Arabia would be the development of census data or other systematic measures that allow socio-economic status to be included in spatial analyses of dengue fever and other diseases.

Explaining Neighbourhood Variations in the Incidence of Dengue Fever in Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia

“…Most neighbourhoods located south of Jeddah are of low socioeconomic status whereas high SES areas tended to be predominantly located in the middle and west of the city near the Red Sea. Middle SES neighbourhoods tended to be newer neighbourhoods located in the north and east of the central business district [43]. On average, low SES neighbourhoods contained the highest average of cases, which was 3.98 times more than high status neighbourhoods for the years 2006-2009.…”

“…As no measures of socio-economic status are contained in the Saudi Arabian census, neighbourhood SES (high, medium and low) was estimated using the Delphi method [42], and the professional knowledge of 32 specialists in academia and financial institutions who worked in Jeddah City. More details are contained in Alkhaldy & Barnett [43]; (iv) Lastly, environmental factors relating to the presence of surface water, both within and adjacent to neighbourhood areas, were considered using data derived from Jeddah City records [44].…”

A Hybrid Data-Knowledge Driven Method for Technology Development Risk Evaluation

“…Existing studies on indicator aggregations can be classified into two categories, knowledge-free [2][3][4] and knowledge-based [5][6][7][8][9], depending on whether experts are involved to provide prior knowledge.…”

“…In the knowledge-based indicator aggregation methods, one of the most commonly used practical methods is to assign weights to different indicators based on expert knowledge by comparing their importance, and use the weighted average of these indicators as the value of the upper-layer indicator [5][6][7][8][9]. In [5], Delphi method was applied to determine the weights of lower-layer indicators and an evaluation system was constructed to assess the nursing simulation teaching quality.…”

A survey of clinical and laboratory characteristics of the dengue fever epidemic from 2017 to 2019 in Zhejiang, China

“…[ 6 , 7 ] Approximately 4 billion people are at risk of contracting dengue and 390 million dengue infections occur annually, of which 96 million are recognized clinically including 20,000 deaths. [ 8 ] Dengue virus (DENV) belongs to the family Flaviviridae and is a single-stranded, positive-sense, ribonucleic acid (RNA) virus with a genome of 10.7 kb. [ 9 ] Infection by any 1 of 4 antigenically distinct serotypes (DENV1-4) can lead to various degrees of disease symptoms ranging from nonspecific febrile illness to classic dengue fever, dengue hemorrhagic fever, and dengue shock syndrome.…”