Migraine attack frequency, duration, and pain intensity: disease burden derived from a community-based survey in northern Tanzania.

OBJECTIVE: One goal of the campaign "Lifting the burden: The global campaign against headache" is to highlight existing evidence about headache worldwide. In this context, the aim of our study was to report the migraine-related headache burden in northern Tanzania. METHODS: From December 2003 until June 2004 a community-based door-to-door survey was undertaken in northern Tanzania, using multistage cluster sampling. Based on the criteria of the International Headache Society, 7412 individuals were enrolled in this survey. RESULTS: Migraine patients' average annual attack frequency was 18.4 (n = 308, standard deviation [SD] ± 47.4) with a mean duration of 16.4 hours (SD ± 20.6). The average headache intensity per patient was 2.65 (SD ± 0.59) with a calculated loss of 6.59 (SD ± 26.7) working days per year. Extrapolation of data to the investigated population (n = 7412) resulted in annual migraine burden of 281.0 migraine days per 1000 inhabitants. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this study reports for the first time the burden that arises from migraine headache in a rural population of sub-Sahara Africa (SSA). As the presented migraine-related burden is considerable, we hope that our data will increase the awareness among local decision makers in allocating resources for treatment and research on headache.