As part of the United States Department of Defense strategy to counter biological threats, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s biological threat reduction program is enhancing the capabilities of countries in the former Soviet Union (FSU) to detect, diagnose, and report endemic and epidemic, manmade or natural cases of especially dangerous pathogens. During these engagements, it is noted that Western-trained and Soviet-trained epidemiologists have difficulty, beyond that of simple translation, in exchanging ideas.
Before 1991, infectious disease surveillance in the FSU was centrally planned in Moscow. The methodologies of infectious disease surveillance and data analysis have remained almost unaltered since this time in most nations of the FSU. Vlassov describes that FSU physicians and other specialists are not taught epidemiology as it is understood in the West. The Soviet public health system and the scientific discipline of epidemiology developed independently of that of other nations. Consequently, many fundamental Soviet terms and concepts lack simple correlates in English and other languages outside the Soviet sphere; the same is true when attempting to translate from English to Russian and other languages of the FSU. Systematic review of the differences in FSU and Western epidemiologic concepts and terminology is therefore needed for international public health efforts, such as disease surveillance, compliance with International Health Regulations 2005, pandemic preparedness, and response to biological terrorism. A multi-language reference in the form of a dictionary would greatly improve mutual comprehension among epidemiologists in the West and the FSU.
Objective
The objective of this study is to describe the development of a multilingual lexicon of epidemiology, which is needed for improved communication in public health surveillance internationally.