An investigation of the relative morbidity of zoonoses in paediatric patients admitted to Ga-Rankuwa Hospital.

: Human-animal interaction is regarded as a positive factor in child development, yet fears have been expressed about the risk of zoonotic diseases. A literature review of zoonotic diseases indicated that it was difficult to judge the relative importance of zoonoses in a population by using incidence or prevalence, as these were not available for all the zoonoses which could occur in children and the data which were available were not comparative. Therefore, in order to investigate the relative importance of zoonoses as a cause of disease in children, relative morbidities were calculated from available medical records from the Department of Paedatrics and Child Health at Ga-Rankuwa Hospital. Diagnoses made were listed and ranked. The relative morbidities of zoonotic diseases were found to be very low. It was concluded that this may have been partially due to the tendency for symptomatic rather than aetiological diagnoses to be made by clinicians, as several of the symptomatic diagnoses made (such as respiratory disease and gastroenteritis) could have had a zoonotic aetiology.