Surveillance

A case study presented at the November 2010 Iowa Annual Swine Disease Conference for Swine Practitioners detailed increases in STB lesions beginning January 2010 [1]. Producers were informed of the problem by their swine processing facility. Tissue samples from affected producers were culture-positive for Mycobacterium avium. In the spring of 2010, USDA Veterinary Services (VS) began monitoring weekly ADRS STB carcass condemn data after a VS Staff Officer was made aware of unusual increases in STB condemns in another region. By June 2010, STB condemn rates in both of the affected areas decreased to typical seasonal levels; however, beginning January 2011 rates again rose beyond baseline seasonal highs, exceeding those seen in the 2010 outbreak.

Objective

This paper characterizes a regional outbreak of tuberculosis (TB) in market swine by combining local swine producer-based information on condemned stock at slaughter with geographically broader FSIS Animal Disposition Reporting System (ADRS) data. This study aims to obtain summary information on anomalous swine TB (STB) condemns at slaughter, compare critical outbreak time frames between outbreak areas, and identify the geographical spread of abnormally high STB condems.

Local data focused on the injection drug using (IDU) population was analyzed using representative samples from three years, 2005, 2009, and 2012, to garner an understanding of high-risk behavior associated with disease transmission.

Objective

The objective of this study is to present findings from the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS) in New Orleans.

EHRs are increasingly being adopted to improve quality of care in health care systems, but they also have potential to monitor health at the population level. There has been relatively little focus on using EHRs for population health surveillance beyond infectious diseases. Current tools to monitor population health (vital statistics, hospital discharge data, population health surveys) are useful but can be expensive, and may be slow to conduct or produce findings. Aggregated EHR-derived data have the potential to deliver cheaper and faster data, and have the capacity to provide information on earlier disease stages, thus increasing the likelihood of timely use. If EHR data can be validated, they can be used to augment existing surveillance methods, resulting in more strategic targeting of health resources and better data to guide and evaluate public health initiatives and policies. New York City (NYC) is currently developing a pilot public health surveillance program known as NYC Macroscope, the first domestic effort to aggregate EHR data from independent primary care practices into a surveillance tool. This EHR-based population health surveillance system will compile summarized data from ambulatory electronic health records to help city health officials monitor and respond to real-time data on conditions of public health importance.

Objective

To describe the potential benefits and challenges of using electronic health record data for population health surveillance, and what to consider when establishing an electronic health record (EHR) surveillance system (EHRSS).

Influenza is associated with significant morbidity and mortality nationally each year and VA's large elderly population is at particular risk. VA Office of Public Health (OPH) has monitored influenza and influenza-like-illness (ILI) activity using the VA's biosurveillance system since 2009 (1,2). VA influenza surveillance capacity has expanded significantly in recent years to include inpatient influenza data, telephone triage data, laboratory testing data and enhanced geospatial mapping capabilities.

Objective

Herein we summarize our ongoing influenza surveillance activities and describe the 2012-2013 influenza season activity in VA.

Outbreaks of Avian influenza (AI) in poultry were first reported in Nigeria in 2006 (1). The only human case was reported in 2007 (1). The epizootics of AI among poultry and wild birds and subsequent risk to human health highlighted the need to detect influenza viruses with pandemic potential and for establishment of Influenza Sentinel Surveillance (ISS) System. This is to aid the description of the the epidemiology and burden of seasonal human influenza, to provide information for public health decision making, for program planning and preparedness and to serve as an early warning for outbreaks of Avian or pandemic flu. Also, to characterize and monitor trends in illnesses and deaths attributable to SARI (2). Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) is one of the 4 sites for ISS in Nigeria and started functioning in 2009.

Objective

To analyze the Lagos site of the National Influenza Sentinel Surveillance (NISS) system and to determine the viruses responsible for Influenza-like illnesses (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI).

Collaborative relationships between academicians and public health practitioners are necessary to ensure that methodologies created in the research setting translate into practice. One barrier to forging these collaborations is restrictions on the sharing and availability of public health surveillance data; therefore, most academics with expertise in method development cannot access 'real world' surveillance data with which to evaluate their approaches. The ISDS Technical Conventions Committee was established in 2013 to facilitate and expedite the development, evaluation, and implementation of technical methods for public health surveillance. The purpose of the committee is to bridge a long-standing gap between technical challenges in public health practice and solution developers needing both understanding of these challenges and representative data.

Objective

The purpose of this panel is to facilitate the dissemination of surveillance-related use cases by public health practitioners with accompanying benchmark datasets to method developers. The panel will present practitioners' experiences with preparing patient-level emergency department data sets to accompany a use case submitted to the ISDS Technical Conventions Committee.

The department of Paediatrics is conducting a HDSS with focus on maternal and child health at peri - urban sites located in Karachi, Pakistan. The study catchment area is 19 sq km with a population of around 274,856. Females between 15 to 49 years of age and less than 5 years old children cohort is around 67,802 and 39,028 respectively. In 2012 around 12557 pregnant women (PW) and 9,136 newborns (NB) were followed through active surveillance. As part of e-mapping the study catchment area which consists of around 50,520 structures has been digitized.

Objective

Geospatial reports are generated to facilitate an ongoing health demographic surveillance system (HDSS) conducted at a peri urban site of Karachi Pakistan. The geospatial maps facilitate in monitoring and protocol adherence of HDSS. In addition different geospatial relationships can be analyzed and various epidemiological patterns can be studied.

Since April 2012, an integrated syndromic surveillance system (ISSC) has been established in health facilities, pharmacies and primary schools in two rural counties of Jiangxi Province, China (1). The objective of ISSC is to integrate syndromic surveillance with case report system for infectious disease to improve the early detection of disease outbreak in rural China. Varicella is a common respiratory infectious disease among children. In most cases, it is mild but it might cause severe complications including, pneumonia, meningitis, even death (2). In this study, varicella related school absenteeism and outpatient visits in health facilities in the surveillance sites of ISSC were collected and analyzed.

Objective

To describe the features of varicella outbreak in rural primary schools and the impacts of school absenteeism surveillance on early detection of infectious disease outbreak.

MOH's national sentinel surveillance programme for influenza is part of the WHO international laboratory-based surveillance network to detect the emergence and spread of new antigenic variants of influenza viruses. Virological sample collection is on-going and is carried out during both outbreak and non-outbreak periods.In 2011 and 2012, the sentinel surveillance programme involved a total of 169 sites (18 government primary care clinics and 151 private/general practitioner [GP] clinics).

Objective

 We evaluated the Singapore Ministry of Health's sentinel surveillance system for influenza virus, which included the monitoring of virological samples from patients with influenza-like illness (ILI) seen at government primary care clinics and private general practitioner clinics in 2011-12.

Singapore's syndromic surveillance programmes include the monitoring of polyclinics and emergency departments (ED) attendances for acute diarrheal illness, acute respiratory infections, influenza-like illness, acute conjunctivitis and chickenpox.

Objective

We evaluated these syndromic surveillance systems for its representativeness, usefulness and data quality and identified areas for improvement.