Infectious Disease

Arizona is facing multiple public health threats from arboviral diseases. State and local public health departments are monitoring two mosquito-borne outbreaks within its borders and two in adjacent territories. To prevent transmission, viremic patients must be identified in a timely manner and encouraged to avoid additional mosquito exposure and vector control actions must be implemented. Using traditional surveillance, however, health departments may not be alerted until the laboratory confirms and reports a positive result, which may take up to 14 days after specimen collection. The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) partnered with local public health jurisdictions to enhance traditional arboviral surveillance by incorporating syndromic surveillance.

Objective

To develop a protocol for enhancing traditional arboviral surveillance with syndromic surveillance and to evaluate the protocol for accuracy, effectiveness, and timeliness

Champaign and Urbana, Illinois are considered twin cities that share the University of Illinois. Due to different geographic recruitment procedures, Champaign and Urbana public elementary schools offer a particularly novel opportunity to examine the H1N1 outbreak among students. Urbana schools recruit from specific geographic areas (neighborhoods) designated by the school district whereas Champaign schools are non-selective in their composition where students residing in Champaign can attend any school within the city.

Objective

The goal of this project is to examine the patterns of school absenteeism during the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 comparing two contiguous school districts with very different enrollment policies.

The burdens of poverty and disease continue to affect the livelihoods of pastoralists in Tanzania. Their knowledge of seasons and the ecosystems has evolved over years to manage human and animal health problems, including food insecurity. But, both local and global factors are putting pressure on their knowledge base and their capacity to manage health issues, this conflict has not been adequately explored nor have the synergies between indigenous and exotic knowledge.

Objective

To collect and assess indigenous knowledge and practices to manage diseases of food security as well as create opportunities to disseminate results for improving self-help.

In recent years, the threat of pandemic influenza has drawn extensive attention to the development and implementation of syndromic surveillance systems for early detection of ILI. Emergency department (ED) data are key components for syndromic surveillance systems. However, the lack of standardization for the content in chief complaint (CC) free-text fields may make it challenging to use these elements in syndromic surveillance systems. Furthermore, little is known regarding how ED data sources should be structured or combined to increase sensitivity without elevating false positives. In this study, we constructed two different models of ED data sources and evaluated the resulting ILI rates obtained in two different institutions.

Objective

To compare the influenza-like illness (ILI) rates in the emergency departments (ED) of a community hospital versus a large academic medical center (AMC).

Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a severe illness that spread in the human population through human-to-human transmission. In the past, EVD outbreaks occurred in the rural communities of Africa, near tropical rainforests, but the most recent outbreak in West Africa has also involved major urban areas and big cities, with air travel playing an important role in its spread.On July 23, 2014, the EVD outbreak was declared in Nigeria following the confirmation of EVD in a traveller, who arrived acutely ill at the international airport in Lagos, South Western Nigeria from Liberia .The outbreak subsequently filtered to a South Southern Nigeria city, by a symptomatic contact who escaped surveillance in Lagos and flew to the South Southern city.

Objective

This study describes the epidemiological characteristics and the transmission dynamics of the EVD outbreak in a South-Southern city of Nigeria.

Introduction Infectious disease surveillance is very important as an element in public health system in the prevention and control of infectious diseases. Results of the Korean National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (KNNDSS) has contributed to the reduction of amount of infectious disease. Nevertheless, the “reporting rate” is continuously being debated.

The KNNDSS classifies 77 infectious diseases into 6 groups: Group I for those requiring immediate control measures; Group II for vaccine-preventable diseases; Group III for diseases that need routine monitoring; Group IV for emerging diseases in Korea; Group V for parasitic infections; and Group VI for disease that need monitoring outbreaks. Group I – VI diseases are monitored by mandatory surveillance system that requires obligatory reporting on infectious diseases ‘without delay’ to a district health center.

The using the National Health Insurance (NHI) claims data is the important source of information for healthcare service research in South Korea, since South Korea achieves universal coverage of its population. In the aspects of data quality and standard, the sixth revision of the Korean Classification of Disease (KCD-6) has been used in Korea since 2011, and 99.9% of healthcare providers use to claims to insurers utilizing Electronic Data Interchange transactions. In this respects, NHI claims data is an opportunity as a supplement for NDDSS data.

In this study, we explored the difference between NNDSS data and NHI claim data and determined opportunity and challenges using NHI data for estimation the magnitude of national infectious disease incidence.

Objective

This study will determine opportunity of using the National Health Insurance (NHI) claims data for supplemental notifiable infectious disease surveillance system at national or regional levels.

Currently, three main sources of data are used to monitor the prevalence of influenza in Ontario: Public Health Agency of Canada’s (PHAC) FluWatch, Ontario’s Acute Care Enhanced Surveillance (ACES) data and Public Health Ontario’s (PHO) traditional laboratory data. However, a limitation of these data sources is that it typically underestimates the burden of infection in populations living in remote communities and/or populations with less severe symptoms. This study describes a self-swabbing surveillance system mediated by a THHL that uses syndromic surveillance tools to recruit and monitor participants with influenza-like illness. The intent of this system is not to replace, but rather to complement other surveillance systems and clinical based testing for influenza, thereby extending the reach of surveillance through the use of self-swabbing. An additional rationale for this type of surveillance system is that it can reduce transmission of infection by limiting the number of visits to emergency departments or doctors’ offices, thereby reducing contact with the young and elderly populations, who are at most risk for infection.

Objective

Explore the use and feasibility of self-swabbing mediated by a telephone health helpline (THHL) as a complementary tool for surveillance of influenza and other common respiratory viruses in Ontario, Canada.

Since November 2014, the Houston Health Department has been receiving antimicrobial resistance information for Streptococcus pneumoniae from a safety net hospital via electronic laboratory reporting (ELR). Antimicrobial characteristics and vaccination rates of pneumococcal disease are of public health interest due to potential implications in treatment and prevention. Ten states participate in the CDC’s Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs) program. Texas, which represents a different and diverse demographic compared to other states, is not an ABCs participating state. No studies have compared local antimicrobial susceptibility percentages to those of the ABCs. The aim of this study is to 1) report the antimicrobial susceptibility of S. pneumoniae in a local cohort, 2) characterize the demographics of the cohort including the use of pneumococcal vaccine, and 3) compare antimicrobial susceptibility percentages of the local cohort to the 2013 ABCs program.

Objective

Our objective is to report the antimicrobial susceptibilities of Streptococcus pneumoniae received from a local safety net hospital via electronic laboratory reporting (ELR), and compare susceptibility percentages with those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Active Bacterial Core surveillance (ABCs) program.

Port Loko District has had over 1400 confirmed EVD cases during this outbreak. However, transmission declined rapidly in early 2015; by mid-April, a few weeks had passed with no known cases. Simultaneously, reporting of sick persons had plummeted across the district and the number of deaths reported in some areas was fewer than expected. These circumstances signaled the need for the EVD surveillance system to broaden its focus from using district surveillance officers (DSOs) to respond to reports of ill and deceased persons (hereafter, “sick and death alerts”) to a more proactive and comprehensive system that relied strongly on community engagement and surveillance through existing structures such as Peripheral Health Units (PHUs), schools and local authorities. While the involvement of local authorities and the community had been central to reporting suspected EVD cases earlier in the outbreak, the decrease in alerts suggested that engagement was diminishing. The reopening of schools and reemergence of the primary healthcare system provided opportunities to decentralize surveillance and strengthen the involvement of these structures. The primary objective was improving EVD surveillance, but the effort was also used to bolster routine surveillance, in preparation for implementating Integrated Disease Surveillance and Reporting.

Objective

Describe the evolution of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) surveillance from a largely reactive system structured primarily around responding to reports of illness and death, to one that was more methodical, proactive and comprehensive

Anthrax is a widely distributed endemic infection in Georgia, affecting nearly the entire country. Many of the human cases that are annually registered are agriculturally acquired. Anthrax remains a public health risk due to active, resistant soil foci. More than 2,000 anthrax affected areas are registered in the country; around 10% of them are active. Recent reports have indicated an increase in the number of human cases as a result of contact with the environment, this is hypothesized to be due to expansion of affected foci, and this has raised concerns of the disease spreading to new areas. The control of anthrax foci is one of the main goals of the public health and veterinary service’s in Georgia. A surveillance program of anthrax foci across pipeline constructions in Georgia has been ongoing since 2003. Field trips are conducted by National Center for Disease Control and Public Health mobile teams to investigate each possible affected area across pipeline constructions.