Detection of Shigella Outbreaks in Argentina Using WHONET and SaTScan

Electronic laboratory-based surveillance can significantly improve the diagnostic specificity and response time of traditional infectious disease surveillance. Under the project “Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study”, we wished to evaluate the application of space-time outbreak detection algorithms utilizing SaTScan to a national database of routinely collected microbiology laboratory data.

Objective

This paper describes the application of the WHONET software integrated with SaTScan to the detection of Shigella outbreaks in a national database using a space-time cluster detection algorithm in simulated real-time and comparison of findings to outbreaks reported to the Ministry of Health.