In November 2002 a NATO summit meeting issued an initiative calling for member states to begin development of an interoperable disease surveillance system that had the ability to give early warning in the event of an attack on armed forces using weapons of mass destruction. In response, the French military have developed the “Projet de Surveillance Spatiale des épidémies au Sein des Forces Armées en Guyane” (2SE FAG), a prototype real-time syndromic surveillance system based on fever case reporting which has been in operation among armed forces personnel in French Guiana since October 2004. Between January and June 2006, French Guiana experienced the largest epidemic of dengue fever in its history. During that year, 2255 confirmed cases and many thousands more suspected cases were recorded among the civilian population. 2SE FAG issued an alert based on a rise in fever cases among armed forces personnel in week 2 of 2006, 5 weeks before a rise was noticed among the civilian population. Limited evaluations of the system have taken place in the past; this study represents a final evaluation of the system before its possible expansion.
Objective
The objective of this study was the evaluation of the syndromic surveillance system 2SE FAG which operates among armed forces personnel in French Guiana using the “Framework for Evaluating Public Health Surveillance Systems for Early Detection of Outbreaks,” published by CDC.