262 CHAPTER SEVEN displayed. Two zones, Bheri and Seti, carry a large burden of trachoma, with prevalence rates of 31.1 and 18.9 cases per 100, respectively, and nearly half (47.7%) of all trachoma in the kingdom. That is, nearly one in three persons in Bheri zone and nearly one in -five persons in Seti zone -were diagnosed - as having trachoma. On the other hand, the other zones are not entirely free of trachoma. Lumbini zone has more than 100,000 cases of trachoma, Rapti zone has nearly 55,000 cases, and Karnali zone, even though it has a relatively small population, has more than 35,000 cases. Three Central region zones (Bagmati, Narayani, and Gandaki) also have sizeable amounts of trachoma, even though prevalence rates in those zones do not exceed one in twenty. TABLE 7-18. DISTRIBUTION OF TRACHOMA BY ZONE (NBS 1981) Estimated Population with Trachoma Estimated Prevalence per 100 Percentage of All Trachoma in Nepal Sample N Zeme Mechi Kosi Sagarmatha Janakpur Bagmati Narayani Gandaki Lumbini Dhaulagiri Rapti Karnali Bheri Seti Mahakali Subtotal Missing 2,480 3,649 3,720 4,027 4,253 4,155 3,294 3,797 485 2,015 483 3,123 1,757 2,392 39,630 g,721 5,611 23,564 44,333 66,216 52,763 44,858 101,313 6438 54,536 35,875 320,419 113,332 36,630 909,834 1.1 0.4 1.9 3.1 4.0 3.5 4.0 7.R 0.4 7.6 19.6 31.1 18.9 4.3 6.5 1.1% 0.6 2.6 4.9 7.3 5.8 4.9 11.l 0.1 6.0 3.9 35.2 12.5 4.0 100.0 257 trach- oma status Total 39,887 909,834 6.5 100.0 Source: FR7.001 AN.4 aToo few cases to meet acceptable level of reliability. Given this geographic distribution, it is also useful to examine the distribution of trachoma by various person characteristics. The distribution of trachoma by age and sex is shown in Table 7-14. Females have a higher prevalence of trachoma than males (7.4 cases per 100 for females versus 5.5 cases per 100 for males) and more cases of trachoma (530,395 female cases versus 379,027
