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In 2003, with the advent of SARS, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) released a document mandating the use of a clinical screening tool to detect patients at high risk for having a febrile respiratory illness (FRI), defined as a temperature of > 38ºC and a new or worsening cough or shortness of breath (1). The FRI screening tool is available in all Ontario Emergency Departments (ED), and is utilized in 86% of them (2). Any patient who meets all of the criteria is designated FRI positive, treated with droplet precautions and is instructed to wear a mask and undergo frequent hand-washing (1). The FRI screening tool was created as a response to the SARS outbreaks, and while it is used to identify any FRI, its sensitivity has not been documented. We attempt to determine the utility of FRI as a defining element of clinical influenza.

Objective

 (1) To determine if patients who are found to be positive for influenza or parainfluenza by culture or antigen detection are all detected by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care's Febrile Respiratory Illness (FRI) screening tool, and thereby treated with appropriate respiratory precautions to prevent spread. (2) To determine if syndromic surveillance or another clinical predictor would be a more effective screening tool than FRI.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

Schistosomiasis is a chronic infection caused by flukes belonging to the genus Schistosoma. At least 200 million people, in 74 countries, are infected with the disease and at least 600 million are at risk of infection [1]. Like the majority of the parasitic diseases, schistosomiasis is influenced by human behavior, mainly water use practices and indiscriminate urination and defecation, but also, failure to take advantage of available screening services.

Objective

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of health education and treatment interventions on the prevalence, intensity and perception of urinary schistosomiasis among school children in three rural communities in Cameroon.

Referenced File
Submitted by elamb on

The late health events such as the heat wave of 2003 showed the need to make public health surveillance evolve in France. Thus, the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance has developed syndromic surveillance systems based on several information sources such as emergency departments. In Reunion Island, the chikungunya outbreak of 2005-2006, then the influenza pandemic of 2009 contributed to the implementation and the development of this surveillance system. In the past years, this tool allowed to follow and measure the impact of seasonal epidemics. Nevertheless, its usefulness for the detection of minor unusual events had yet to be demonstrated.

 

Objective

To show with examples that syndromic surveillance system can be a reactive tool for public health surveillance.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on

The IBBS is part of the Indonesian MoH HIV Surveillance System, which include Serological Surveillance, Behavioral Surveillance, Reproductive Tract Infection Survey, and monthly HIV/AIDS facilitybased (hospitals, HCs, VCT Sites) monthly reports. The IBBS 2011 was conducted in 11 provinces (22 districts/municipalities) encompassing eight Most At Risk Populations (MARPs) – injection drug users, transsexuals, men who have sex with men, youths, inmates, mobile men, direct female sex workers (FSWs), and indirect FSWs. Data of 442 direct FSWs of the Jayapura Municipality and Jayawijaya District (Papua Province) showed that 406 (91.85%) have sex with partners who did not use condoms. Of these 406 FSWs 60 (14.78%) were HIV positive and 231 (56.89%) were STD positive.

 

Objective

To analyze the Integrated Behavioral & Biological Surveillance (IBBS) 2011 data for designing a condom utilization program.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on

To develop and implement an effective program of rabies eradication in Ukraine in 2008 was founded the unique collection of samples of pathological materials confirmed as positive in rabies at the regional veterinary laboratories of Ukraine. The collection is constantly updated and to present moment it includes 1389 samples from all regions of Ukraine, selected from 17 animal species and humans.

Objective:

To identify the presence of genetic clusters of rabies virus at the territory of Ukraine and to determine the degree of activity of rabies vaccines against these genetic clusters.

 

Submitted by Magou on

EIDSS supports collection and analysis of epidemiological, clinical and laboratory information on infectious diseases in medical, veterinary and environmental sectors. At this moment the system is deployed in Kazakhstan at 150 sites (planned 271) in the veterinary surveillance and at 8 sites (planned 23) in human surveillance. The system enforces the one-health concept and provides capacity to improve surveillance and response to infectious disease including especially dangerous like CCHF. EIDSS has been in development since 2005 and is a free-of-charge tool with plans for open-source development. The system development is based on expertise of a number of US and international experts including CDC, WRAIR, USAMRIID, et al.

Objective:

The objective of this demonstration is to show conference attendees how one-health surveillance in medical, veterinary and environmental sectors can be improved with Electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance System (EIDSS) using CCHF as an example from Kazakhstan.

 

Submitted by Magou on

The Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP) has been being implemented in the Republic of Uzbekistan since 2004 within the framework of the Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the Government of the United States of America Concerning Cooperation in the Area of the Promotion of Defense Relations and the Prevention of Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction of 06.05.2001. Threat agent detection and response activities that target a list of especially dangerous pathogens are being carried out under the BTRP within the health care system of Uzbekistan. This presentation reviews some of the achievements of the program to date.

Objective:

To review the implementation of the Biological Threat Reduction Program (BTRP) of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency in the Republic of Uzbekistan since 2004.

 

Submitted by Magou on

The International Society for Disease Surveillance held its eleventh annual conference in San Diego on December 4th and 5th, 2012, under the theme Expanding Collaborations to Chart a New Course in Public Health Surveillance.  During these two days, practitioners and researchers across many disciplines gathered to share best practices, lessons learned and cutting edge approaches to timely disease surveillance.  A record number of abstracts were received, reviewed and presented – the schedule included 99 orals, 4 panels, 94 posters, 5 roundtables and 12 system demonstrations.  Presenters represented 24 different countries from Africa, North and South America, Europe, and Asia .  Topics covered included, but were not limited to, statistical methods for outbreak detection, border health, data quality, evaluation of novel data streams, influenza surveillance, best practices and policies for information sharing, social network analysis, data mining techniques, surveillance during weather events and mass gatherings, syndrome development, and novel uses of syndromic surveillance data.  There were also discussions on the impact of regulations and standards development on disease surveillance, including Meaningful Use and the International Health Regulations.

Submitted by Magou on

Over the past five years, efforts to control malaria have been intensified in Uganda (1). With the intensification of these efforts, accurate and timely data are needed to monitor impact of the interventions and guide malaria control program planning (2, 3). We present data on trends in malaria burden over four years from six outpatient health facilities located in regions of varying malaria endemicity in Uganda.



Objective:

To estimate trends in malaria morbidity at six sentinel sites in Uganda.

 

Submitted by Magou on
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