Syndromic surveillance can supplement diagnosis-based surveillance in resource-limited settings with limited laboratory infrastructure. Syndromic surveillance allows for early outbreak detection relative to traditional systems and enables community health monitoring during outbreaks. Monitoring and disease diagnosis can be strengthened using pre-diagnostic data and statistical algorithms to detect morbidity trends.
Alerta (2002-11) and Vigila (2011-present) are sequentially implemented electronic disease surveillance systems created by the Peruvian Navy to improve the detection, prevention, and control of disease outbreaks. The phone-, internet-, and radio-based reporting system now covers over 97.5% of the Navy population, encompassing 169 reporting establishments that treat active and retired service members, dependents, and civilian employees. Acute diarrheal disease, respiratory infections, and pneumonias are reported weekly, whereas specific notifiable diseases such as malaria, dengue, and tuberculosis are reported immediately after case detection.
Objective
To use data from the Peruvian Navy’s electronic syndromic surveillance systems to estimate the baseline incidence of acute diarrheal disease (ADD) and detect outbreaks among individuals accessing military medical facilities from 2009-13.