A traveler was defined as a resident

of Quebec who traveled outside of Canada, the United States, and Europe. VFRs were defined as immigrants and their offsprings who are ethnically and/or racially distinct from the majority of the population of their country of Roscovitine in vitro residence, and who return to their country of origin to visit family or friends.10 They typically travel from a developed country to a less developed country. Our study includes immigrants, their spouse or children born in the host country, and also overseas adoptees returning to visit their country of origin after their arrival in Quebec. The “non-VFRs” category includes those who traveled for tourism, work, study, or volunteering. The provincial reportable disease information system contains, for each reported case, information such as date of birth, gender, reporting date, country of acquisition, and clinical course. Each reported case generally undergoes an epidemiological investigation by the public health department of the person’s region of residence. This investigation also provides, when appropriate, information on risk factors for acquiring the infection such as the destination, length, and purpose of the trip. For the purposes of this study, a learn more denominalized copy of this investigation

was requested for each eligible case. A pretested form was used to extract pertinent data. The number of Quebec travelers is not available directly so we relied on estimation for the number of trips by Statistics Canada which comes from surveys and counts of travelers conducted at border crossings.5 This study uses a cross-sectional design. The proportion of cases by purpose of trip is listed, followed by sociodemographic characteristics and risk factors. The proportions of cases among VFRs are compared to other Quebec data collected between 1997 and 2002.7,19 The chi-square Dehydratase test is used to compare VFRs and non-VFRs as to the distribution of cases by age group (three categories), gender, trip length (three categories),

and travel health consultation before departure. The project was approved by the administrative and research ethics board of Charles-LeMoyne Hospital, Longueuil, Canada. A total of 772 files were eligible for the study throughout the province, including 318 cases of malaria, 398 cases of hepatitis A, and 56 cases of typhoid fever. We obtained 727 files (93.5%) from public health departments, of which 657 (81.5%) had undergone an epidemiological investigation and 363 (49.9%) were travelers. The purpose of the trip was known for 309 cases in travelers, with 183 VFRs. Among the 126 non-VFRs, the purpose of the trip was either tourism (N = 70), or study, work, or volunteering (N = 56). The description of the proportion of cases among travelers by purpose of trip and disease is shown in Table 1.