Epidemiology

In order to transition the forecasting, estimation and management of epidemic risks to individual administrative areas, the Agency for Consumer Rights Protection of Kazakhstan has developed a concept for modernizing the existing national system of the epidemiological surveillance (SES).

It is proposed that the data from the SES (epidemiology, sanitary and epidemiological background, external environmental objects and database) will be consolidated to generate a new epidemic risk control and management tool called the Regional Sanitary-Epidemiological Passport (RSEP) for each of Kazakhstan’s districts. The RSEP will contain infectious incidence rate dynamics according to the primary (marker) infections (7 nosologies) including a forecast for 2-3 years, and natural and soil foci GIS maps for especially dangerous pathogens (EDP) with a 3-5 year forecast of their activity.

The RSEP is planned as a new working tool for epidemiologists to aid in making objective estimates, forecasting epidemic risks in particular areas of Kazakhstan, and taking preventive steps to lower epidemic risks.

Objective

Development and approbation of the epidemic risk estimation and management methodology based on multivariate analysis per administrative clusters of Kazakhstan using the Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance System (EIDSS) technical capabilities.

The global effort of malaria control is in line with the one world one health concept, but then a globally defined ‘‘one-size-fits-all’’ malaria control strategy would be inefficient in endemic areas. Plasmodium falciparum is the type of malaria parasite that most often causes severe and life-threatening malaria. People get malaria by being bitten by an infective female Anopheles mosquito. Regional malaria elimination campaigns in 1940s followed by the Global Malaria Eradication Program in 1955 did not succeed in eliminating malaria from subSaharan Africa, which accounts for 80% of today’s burden of malaria. The basic reproductive number, Ro, has played a central role in epidemiological theory for malaria and other infectious diseases because it provides an index of transmission intensity and establishes threshold criteria.

Objective

To examine the likely impact of malaria parasite intervention points for a steady state regional control program in endemic areas

Syndromic surveillance system has been developed and implemented all over the world, and many studies showed that syndromic data sources had improved timeliness towards traditional surveillance method in the early warning of some infectious disease epidemics. However, owing to the uncertainties of disease epidemic features, clinical manifestations and population behaviors, the early warning timeliness of syndromic data sources might change across time and population, and few studies had explored their consistency in different epidemic periods of infectious diseases.

Objective

To study and compare the timeliness of syndromic surveillance system for the early warning of infectious diseases among different epidemic seasons.

The International Society for Disease Surveillance (ISDS) will hold its thirteenth annual conference in Philadelphia on December 10th and 11th, 2014.  The society’s mission is to improve population health by advancing the science and practice of disease surveillance, and the annual conference advances this mission by bringing together practitioners and researchers from multiple fields involved in disease surveillance, including public health, epidemiology, health policy, biostatistics and mathematical modeling, informatics and computer science. This year the conference received a record number of abstract submissions (267), from 33 countries. We accepted 102 abstracts for oral presentations, along with 40 lightning talks and 100 posters.

The influenza A(H7N9) virus emerged in early 2013 in China, with more than 130 laboratory-confirmed cases identified within a short period of about three months. Evidence-based public health response is essential for effective control of the disease, which relies on epidemiological and clinical data with good quality and timeliness. Publicly available information from sources such as official health website, online news, blogs or social media has the potential of rapid sharing of data to a wide community of experts for more comprehensive analyses. In our study we described the strength and limitation of these data for various types of epidemiological inferences.

Objective

This study described the strength and limitation of using line lists that built on publicly available data in various types of epidemiological inferences during the H7N9 epidemic in China, 2013.

VA began using ESSENCE as a public health surveillance tool in 2005. The system offered alerting capability for pre-defined syndromes and querying capability for outpatient ICD-9 diagnosis codes. Herein, we highlight examples of how we have invested in upgrades to analytic capabilities and expanded data sources available to ESSENCE in order to augment the overall utility of this system within VA.

Objective

To describe VA’s experience developing innovative and alternative uses of a surveillance system and improve the overall value proposition of this tool for the agency.