NOTE: A surveillance case definition is a set of uniform criteria used to define a disease for public health surveillance. Surveillance case definitions enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions. Surveillance case definitions are not intended to be used by healthcare providers for making a clinical diagnosis or determining how to meet an individual patient’s health needs.
A slowly progressive ulcerative disease of the skin and lymphatics of the genital and perianal area caused by infection with Calymmatobacterium granulomatis. A clinically compatible case would have one or more painless or minimally painful granulomatous lesions in the anogenital area.
Demonstration of intracytoplasmic Donovan bodies in Wright or Giemsa-stained smears or biopsies of granulation tissue
A clinically compatible case that is laboratory confirmed
The 1997 case definition appearing on this page was previously published in the 1990 MMWR Recommendations and Reports titled Case Definitions for Public Health Surveillance.1,2 Thus, the 1990 and 1997 versions of the case definition are identical.
