Objective:

To estimate the proportion of eye-clinic patients diagnosed with conjunctivitis in Northern Uganda and identify factors associated with diagnosis.

Approach:

• Design and setting: Cross-sectional study of 423 patients attending Gulu Regional Referral Hospital’s Eye Clinic in August–September 2024.
• Assessment: Ophthalmic clinical officers diagnosed conjunctivitis, with ophthalmologist verification. Participants provided demographic, socioeconomic, clinical, and healthcare-related information.
• Analysis: Modified Poisson regression was used to assess factors independently associated with conjunctivitis.

Key Findings:

• Conjunctivitis was diagnosed in 298 patients (70.4%); this is the proportion among clinic attendees, not a population prevalence estimate.
• Recent exposure to someone known to have conjunctivitis was associated with a 13% higher prevalence after adjustment.
• Patients aged 40 years or older had a 27% lower prevalence than children aged 0–11 years.
• Recent eye injury or surgery and chronic illness were associated with lower prevalence; the authors note that healthcare access or surveillance differences could explain these associations.

Interpretation:

The authors identify person-to-person exposure as an associated factor and discuss hygiene education, rapid case identification, and temporary isolation in settings where outbreaks may occur. They call for prospective, laboratory-confirmed studies to characterize conjunctivitis subtypes and their risk factors.

Limitations:

• Convenience sampling at a single eye clinic limits generalizability to the wider community.
• The cross-sectional design cannot establish causation.
• Diagnoses were clinical rather than laboratory-confirmed, and conjunctivitis subtypes were not distinguished.
• The study lacked sufficient outbreak-specific data to assess whether the March 2024 outbreak contributed to the findings; the authors describe this possibility as speculative.

Sources:

• Article context provided