Salmonella Infections Acquired Abroad and Detected in Finland, 1995-2009

In Finland, the annual number of reported Salmonella infections has been approximately 2,000-3,000 during the past 10 years. The vast majority of the infections has been acquired abroad. Nowadays salmonellosis is the second most reported cause of gastroenteritis in Finland. All Salmonella infections are included in generally hazardous communicable diseases. This register-based study aims to find out the trends of Salmonella infections that are most likely contracted from abroad, but detected in Finland during 1995-2009, and to examine how these trends are correlated with the number of Finnish travellers to these destinations. All the registered 30,977 Salmonella cases of foreign origin during 1995-2009 were received from the National Infectious Diseases Register. Passenger information was extracted from the public data of Statistics Finland. The analyses targeted countries that had been at least once among the ten most frequently reported source countries for salmonellosis during the follow-up period. The vast majority of the Salmonella infections was detected among Finnish citizens (95.0%). More female (54.4%) than male cases were reported (p <.001). The mean age of the persons with registered salmonellosis of foreign origin (37.7 yrs) was not essentially changed during the study period, but, instead, reports on children (