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Cowling Benjamin

Infectious disease was the second most common cause of death in 1949, and the epidemic situation of infectious diseases was so severe that the Chinese government made major investments to the control and prevention of infectious diseases. During the past 60 years the development of the notifiable disease surveillance system in China has experienced 3 phases, including germination stage, development stage, improvement and consolidation stage (1). As the quality of infectious diseases surveillance has been improved stepwisely, the national morbidity of class A and B notifiable disease decreased from 7157.5 per 100,000 in 1970 to 225.8 per 100,000 in 2013, and the mortality decreased from 56.0 per 100,000 in 1959 to 1.2 per 100,000 in 2013(2).

Objective: We aimed to review the development and changes of National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS) from 1950 to 2013, and to analyze and summarize the changes in regulations and public health surveillance practices in China.

Submitted by elamb on

Much progress has been made on the development of novel systems for influenza surveillance, or explored the choices of algorithms for detecting the start of a peak season. The use of multiple streams of surveillance data has been shown to improve performance but few studies have explored its use in situational awareness to quantify level or trend of disease activity. In this study we propose a multivariate statistical approach which describes overall influenza activity and handles interrupted or drop-in surveillance systems.

 

Objective

This paper describes the use of multiple influenza surveillance data for situational awareness of influenza activity.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

Surveillance of individual data streams is a well-accepted approach to monitor community incidence of infectious diseases such as influenza, and to enable timely detection of outbreaks so that control measures can be applied. However the performance of alerts may be improved by simultaneously monitor a variety of data sources, or multiple streams (eg from different geographic locations) of the same type, rather than monitoring only aggregate data. Rates of influenza-like illness in subtropical settings typically show greater variability than in temperate regions.

 

Objective

This paper describes the use of time series models for simultaneous monitoring of multiple streams of influenza surveillance data.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

Infectious disease surveillance is important for disease control as well as to inform prevention and treatment [1]. While influenza surveillance data coverage and quality has improved significantly in recent years due to resource investments and advances in information technology, the need remains for improvements in data dissemination to the wider community.

Objective

This paper describes a review of modes and styles of the online dissemination of national influenza surveillance data.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

A sudden surge in hospital admissions in public hospital during influenza peak season has been a challenge to healthcare and manpower planning. In Hong Kong, the timing of influenza peak seasons are variable and early short-term indication of possible surge may facilitate preparedness which could be translated into strategies such as early discharge or reallocation of extra hospital beds. In this study we explore the potential use of multiple routinely collected syndromic data in the forecast of hospital admissions.

 

Objective

This paper describes the potential use of multiple influenza surveillance data to forecast hospital admissions for respiratory diseases.

Submitted by hparton on

Scarlet fever is a notifiable disease in Hong Kong for over 40 years. There was relatively low activity of scarlet fever until an outbreak in mid-2011 which resulted in two deaths and more than 1,500 cases. Scarlet fever incidence remained elevated since then with >10-fold increase comparing to that before the upsurge. Reemergence of scarlet fever was also reported in China in 2011 and the United Kingdom in 2014. We analyzed the patterns in scarlet fever incidence in Hong Kong using the notifiable disease surveillance data from 2005-2015.

Objective:

This study examined the epidemiology of scarlet fever in Hong Kong based on notifiable disease surveillance data, in a period where a 10-fold upsurge in scarlet fever incidence occurred. High risk groups and important factors associated with scarlet fever transmission were identified.

Submitted by elamb on

An electronic smart-card based school absenteeism surveillance system was introduced to Hong Kong since 2008. The pilot surveillance system initially began with 18 schools in 2008, and expanded to 107 schools in the current academic year of 2013-14. Data on all-cause absenteeism were collected from all participating schools and absenteeism due to sickness such as influenza-like illness, gastroenteritis and hand-foot-and-mouth disease were collected from 39 (36.4%) schools. Data collected were aggregated for the whole territory on a weekly basis for analysis. Temporal trend of influenza activity was disseminated with simple public health advice to each participating schools and the general public through a web-based dashboard [1]. These steps of data aggregation, analysis, and feedback report generation were automated by scripts in the software R which enhanced the timeliness and minimized workload required for maintaining the system.

Objective

This study evaluated the performance of an electronic smart-card based school absenteeism system in Hong Kong, 2008-2014.

Submitted by Magou on

The influenza A(H7N9) virus emerged in early 2013 in China, with more than 130 laboratory-confirmed cases identified within a short period of about three months. Evidence-based public health response is essential for effective control of the disease, which relies on epidemiological and clinical data with good quality and timeliness. Publicly available information from sources such as official health website, online news, blogs or social media has the potential of rapid sharing of data to a wide community of experts for more comprehensive analyses. In our study we described the strength and limitation of these data for various types of epidemiological inferences.

Objective

This study described the strength and limitation of using line lists that built on publicly available data in various types of epidemiological inferences during the H7N9 epidemic in China, 2013.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on

H7N9 virus emerged in Eastern China in March 2013, which led to >550 human cases and >200 deaths in 2 years. Live poultry markets (LPMs) are considered as a major source of human H7N9 infections. In late 2013, the virus had spread to the southern provinces including Guangdong. Its provincial capital Guangzhou, detected its first local H7N9 human case in mid-January 2014 and reaching 10 cases in a month. As a response, Guangzhou government announced a two-week city-wide market closure, banning trading and storing of live poultry. Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention took this opportunity to establish enhanced surveillance on top of the existing routine LPM surveillance, to assess the impact of such on H7N9 viral isolation and survival.

Objective

This study assessed the effect of disinfection and closing live poultry markets in China on avian influenza A(H7N9) virus detection and viability in a natural setting. We characterized virus detection at different sampling sites to assess exposure risk to the general public and live poultry traders.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on

The general health-seeking behavior has been well described in different populations. However, how different symptoms have driven health-seeking behavior was less explored. From the patient’s perspective, health-seeking behavior tends to be responsive to discomfort or symptoms rather than the type of diseases which is unknown before medical consultation, hence symptom-specific behavior may more realistically reflect responses from the public which is subsequently captured by syndromic surveillance. In Hong Kong, sentinel surveillance of common diseases, such as ILI and acute diarrhoeal diseases, consists of general practitioners (GP), general outpatient clinics (GOPC) and Chinese medicine practitioners (CMP). These existing sources of syndromic surveillance data are affected by the choice of health services and health seeking behavior and hence may over- or under-represent actual disease burden. By understanding health-seeking behavior at different times of the year, we could estimate the disease burden in the population, and population subgroup from multiple surveillance data.

Objective

This study described health-seeking behavior of the general population specific to different symptoms, at different times of the year. This information allows the estimation of population disease burden over the year using sentinel surveillance data. We will use influenza-like illness (ILI) as an example.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
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