International Journal of Health Geographics BioMed Central Research Open Access Exploring spatial patterns and hotspots of diarrhea in Chiang Mai, Thailand Nakarin Chaikaew*1, Nitin K Tripathi1 and Marc Souris1,2,3 Address: 1Remote Sensing and GIS field of study, Asian Institute of Technology, Pathumthani, Thailand, 2Center for Vector and Vector Borne Diseases, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Nakhonpathom, Thailand and 3Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Marseille, France Email: Nakarin Chaikaew* -
[email protected]; Nitin K Tripathi -
[email protected]; Marc Souris -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 24 June 2009 Received: 4 March 2009 Accepted: 24 June 2009 International Journal of Health Geographics 2009, 8:36 doi:10.1186/1476-072X-8-36 This article is available from: http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/8/1/36 © 2009 Chaikaew et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Diarrhea is a major public health problem in Thailand. The Ministry of Public Health, Thailand, has been trying to monitor and control this disease for many years. The methodology and the results from this study could be useful for public health officers to develop a system to monitor and prevent diarrhea outbreaks. Methods: The objective of this study was to analyse the epidemic outbreak patterns of diarrhea in Chiang Mai province, Northern Thailand, in terms of their geographical distributions and hotspot identification.