Heymann David

India is one of the global Ôhot-spotsÕ for emergence and re-emergence of pathogens and propagation of those that are drug resistant. Disease surveillance gained momentum in India only after the outbreaks of cholera in Delhi in 1988 and plague in Surat in 1994, which not only had significant mortality, morbidity and economic consequences. The current key indicator based surveillance system in the country, the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) has evolved from systems that were initiated and scaled up as a response to these outbreaks. IDSP is constrained by challenges of human and material resources and the quality of data generated at the frontline is questionable making it difficult to detect, diagnose, and control outbreaks until they had become quite large. Timeliness and Completeness of weekly reports are the two key SQIs even suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO) to monitor the quality of the surveillance system in the districts and states. The goal of the current study was to assess the validity of these SQIs in predicting the overall surveillance quality in a system where data quality was questionable.

Objective

To assess the validity of the Surveillance Quality Indicators (SQIs), Timeliness and Completeness of the weekly surveillance reports as indicators for overall quality of surveillance system and core and supplementary surveillance functions.

The IDSP is the key indicator based surveillance system in the country to fulfill the core surveillance and response functions requirement under the IHR–2005. Periodic reviews of the IDSP in the country have shown that it has been ineffective in meeting its main objective of disease control in the country. Efforts are required to systematically identify and adequately address the factors affecting the performance of IDSP for it to achieve its objectives and ensure compliance to the IHR-2005 requirements for national and global health security.

Objective

The goal of this study was to assess and review the factors (core and supplementary surveillance system attributes and functions) affecting the outcome of the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) in the state of Andhra Pradesh, in India.