Anthony K. Ngugi

Epilepsy is one of the commonest neurological disorders affecting more than 50 million people worldwide; out of whom 40 million live in resource poor countries (RPC) with10 million in Africa alone. Although these estimates are global, they are based on very sparse data from RPC, particularly from sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). Additionally, there is considerable heterogeneity of prevalence and incidence estimates from RPC and it's not clear if this could be due to different study methods used. The incidence derived from a few studies, suggest that prevalence should be much higher than in the West. It is however unclear if this discrepancy due to spontaneous remission or differential survival.

In Africa, there are only a few studies that examine the mortality of epilepsy and these studies suggest that mortality is increased. However, the magnitude is unclear, and the risk factors and causes of death (COD) have not been identified.

My current work, which forms the basis for my PhD study, involves trying to determine the burden of Active Convulsive Epilepsy (ACE) across 5 sites in SSA using standardized tools and methodology. Further, I am interested in estimating the relative mortality due to epilepsy, causes and risk factors for mortality in people with epilepsy and validating a three-stage methodology for detecting cases of ACE in population-based studies.