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Infectious Disease

Absenteeism has great advantages in promoting the early detection of epidemics. School absenteeism surveillance could timely detect the aggregations of absentees in time and space, so as to provide effective early warning and prevention and control of infectious diseases outbreaks in schools. Since April 1, 2012, an integrated syndromic surveillance system (ISSC) has been implemented in rural Hubei Province, China. With school absence data, finding the optimal model and related appropriate parameters for early warning of epidemics is necessary and practical.

Objective

To explore the optimal model and its related parameters via EWMA and CUSUM (C1, C2, C3) models in school absenteeism surveillance for early detection of infectious disease outbreaks in rural China.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on

Interactive tools for visualization of disease outbreaks has been improving markedly in the past few years. With the flagships Google Flutrends1 and HealthMap2 providing prime examples. These tools provide interactive access to the general public concerning the current state-of-affairs for disease outbreaks generally and specifically for influenza. For example, while browsing HealthMap I learned of a case of tuberculosis on my campus, Iowa State University. While extremely sophisticated, these tools do not utilize modern statistical algorithms for detection or forecasting. In addition, the development cost and perhaps the maintenance cost is not trivial. We aim to build a similar visualization tool that incorporates modern algorithms for detection and forecasting but has low development and maintenance cost. Due to the low cost this tool is appropriate for quick deployment in developing countries for emerging outbreaks as well as public health agencies with declining operating budgets.

Objective

To build a zero-cost tool for disease outbreak visualization, detection, and forecasting incorporating modern tools.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on

Researchers have developed varied methods for forecasting influenza activity using surveillance data with predictive models, but real-world applications in public health programs are rare. To inform consideration of whether and how public health practice should incorporate influenza forecasting, we conducted a systematic review of these methods.

Objective

To assess studies of epidemiological forecasting models for human influenza activity.

Submitted by knowledge_repo… on

Dengue fever is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the Republic of the Philippines (RP) and across the world. Early identification of geographic outbreaks can help target intervention campaigns and mitigate the severity of outbreaks. Electronic disease surveillance can improve early identification but, in most dengue endemic areas data pre-existing digital data are not available for such systems. Data must be collected and digitized specifically for electronic disease surveillance. Twitter, however, is heavily used in these areas; for example, the RP is among the top 20 producers of tweets in the world. If social media could be used as a surrogate data source for electronic disease surveillance, it would provide an inexpensive pre-digitized data source for resource-limited countries. This study investigates whether Twitter extracts can be used effectively as a surrogate data source to monitor changes in the temporal trend of dengue fever in Cebu City and the National Capitol Region surrounding Manila (NCR) in the RP.

Objective:

To determine whether Twitter data contains information on dengue-like illness and whether the temporal trend of such data correlates with the incidence dengue or dengue-like illness as identified by city and national health authorities.

 

Submitted by Magou on

In Rwanda, communicable diseases are the mostly predominant representing 90% of all reported medical consultations in health centers. The country has often faced epidemics including emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. To enhance its preparedness to identify and respond to outbreaks and prevent epidemics, the Government of Rwanda has developed and deployed an electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (eIDSR) working with Voxiva with funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC).

Objective:

(1) To describe the implementation of the electronic system for integrated disease surveillance in Rwanda.

(2) To present the sensitivity and specificity of the electronic reporting system to detect potential outbreaks

 

Submitted by Magou on

Influenza is a significant public health problems in the US leading to over one million hospitalizations in the elderly population (age 65 and over) annually. While influenza preparedness is an important public health issue, previous research has not provided comprehensive analysis of season-by-season timing and geographic shift of influenza in the elderly population. These findings fail to document the intricacies of each unique influenza season, which would benefit influenza preparedness and intervention. The annual harmonic regression model fits each season of disease incidence characterized by its own unique curve. Using this model, characteristics of the seasonal curve for each state and each season can be compared. We hypothesize that travelling waves of influenza in the 48 contiguous states differ dramatically in each influenza season.

 

Objective

In surveillance it is imperative that we know when and where a disease first begins. The objective of this study was to examine trends in traveling waves of influenza in the US elderly population. Preparedness for influenza is an important yet difficult public health goal due to variability in annual strains, timing, and shift of the influenza virus. In order to better prepare for influenza epidemics, it is important to assess seasonal variation across individual influenza seasons on a state-by-state basis. This approach will lead to effective interventions especially for susceptible populations such as the elderly.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

Respiratory viruses cause substantial morbidity and costly resource utilization among young children, especially during the winter months. Accurate estimates of the impact of these viruses are important in guiding prevention efforts and measuring the impact of public health interventions. Previous studies have focused on the rate of hospitalizations resulting from viral infections, particularly those attributable to influenza virus for which a vaccine is available, but have not included healthcare use in the emergency department (ED) nor considered the impact of other viruses such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), for which limited preventative methods are available. We used ED surveillance data for acute respiratory infection to measure the population-based impact of specific viruses.

 

Objective

To use surveillance data to estimate resource utilization and parental lost productivity associated with influenza and RSV infections among young children.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

While mass media coverage of bird flu often provides specific information that may prevent or contain the disease, it is often less than ideal; the public may become fearful and panic at the news of a potential outbreak of bird flu which has a high fatality case rate of more than 60% with no available proven vaccine while supplies of antivirals may be in short supply. As reported by Reuters (3/17/2006) using data from the CDC, a correlation was made between the intense media coverage of bird flu outbreaks overseas in the Fall of ‘05, and a ‘spike’ in sales of Tamiflu which was higher than at any other time over the previous 5 years; documented by syndromic surveillance of Medicaid scrips (NYS DOH), and retail pharmacy sales (NYC DOHMH), authorities suspect the drug was stockpiled.

 

Objective

To ascertain whether mass media reportage of bird flu outbreaks during the moderate US flu season of 2006-7 influenced sales of antivirals in NYC and Upstate NY as monitored by syndromic surveillance, and to compare such data to that generated during the moderate flu season of 2005-06 following a period of intense media coverage in the Fall of 2005.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

The former Soviet Union (FSU)—through the Sanitary-Epidemiologic Service (SES)—developed an extensive system of disease surveillance that was effective, yet centrally planned in Moscow. Even after the fall of the FSU in 1991, most newly independent states maintained all or parts of the SES structure. However, even 15 years later, the loss of economic and technical assistance from Moscow has negatively impacted the effectiveness and efficiency of disease surveillance in these republics, including Armenia and Georgia. In 2005, Armenia and Georgia reported tuberculosis (TB) incidences of 71 and 83, respectively, per 100,000.

 

Objective

To enhance its effectiveness and efficiency, we evaluated TB surveillance in the FSU Republics of Armenia and Georgia.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

We have previously shown that timeliness of detection is influenced both by the data source (e.g., ambulatory vs. emergency department) and demographic characteristics of patient populations (e.g., age). Because epidemic waves are thought to move outward from large cities, patient distance from an urban center also may affect disease susceptibility and hence timing of visits. Here, we describe spatial models of local respiratory illness spread across two major metropolitan areas and identify recurring early hotspots of risk. These models are based on methods that explicitly track illness as a traveling wave across local geography.

 

Objective

To characterize yearly spatial epidemic waves of respiratory illness to identify early hotspots of infection.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on
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