Why is disease surveillance important

Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. Public Health Surveillance and Data. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Minus Related Pages. Service through Surveillance.

How we track health problems CDC surveillance systems fall into four broad categories covering infectious diseases, noninfectious health conditions, both infectious and noninfectious diseases and health conditions, and risk factors and exposures. Where surveillance investments go Surveillance-related grants and funding have increased over time. Governments and organizations should understand the importance of surveillance in disease and epidemic control, because in many cases when surveillance fails, the program fails, as demonstrated in a case study below.

Surveillance systems that generate specific data on diseases and geographic areas are imperative because they help measure the relative importance of a health event. Without quality public health data, interventions may be misguided and wasteful. Confidence in the surveillance system that generated these numbers is crucial in resource allocation. Should more money go towards controlling a disease that kills one million people per year, or one thousand? Such questions cannot even be raised without surveillance and data collection.

The main types of information collected by surveillance systems to measure the relative importance of a disease are: The re-emergence of Schistosomiasis in the Sichuan province of China is a perfect example of the importance of ongoing surveillance and data collection before, during, and after the implementation of a disease control program.

A person contracts Schistosomiasis after he or she is exposed to water that contains the Schistosoma parasites, which enter the body through the skin. The life cycle of a Schistosoma worm is complex and includes a stage in which the parasite matures in a specific type of freshwater snail.

Over the past few decades, the Sichuan province has been very successful in its efforts to control Schistosomiasis. The program to stop transmission of the disease included mass drug campaigns and the use of pesticides to kill the snail hosts implicated in the life cycle of the parasites.

However, a follow-up study showed that there were eight counties that had previously declared themselves as having controlled the disease where the disease was reemerging.

The surveillance system was not continuing to coordinate effectively with all parties involved; it was not closely monitoring the snail population in the area, nor was it seeking potential new Schistosomiasis cases. This case study demonstrates the importance of surveillance systems and data collection in multiple ways:. As illustrated here, surveillance before, during, and after any public health program is crucial for its success.

Public Health Surveillance. After the objectives for surveillance have been determined, critical characteristics of surveillance are usually apparent, including:. Other characteristics of well-conducted surveillance are described in Appendix A. The importance of each of these characteristics can vary according to the purpose of surveillance, the disease under surveillance, and the planned use of surveillance data See Table 5.

To establish the objectives of surveillance for a particular disease in a specific setting and to select an appropriate method of conducting surveillance for that disease, asking and answering the following questions will be helpful. Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Lesson 5: Public Health Surveillance. Minus Related Pages.

Section 2: Purpose and Characteristics of Public Health Surveillance Public health surveillance provides and interprets data to facilitate the prevention and control of disease. After the objectives for surveillance have been determined, critical characteristics of surveillance are usually apparent, including: Timeliness , to implement effective control measures; Representation , to provide an accurate picture of the temporal trend of the disease; Sensitivity , to allow identification of individual persons with disease to facilitate treatment; quarantine, or other appropriate control measures; and Specificity , to exclude persons not having disease.

What is the health-related event under surveillance? What is its case definition? What is the purpose and what are the objectives of surveillance? What are the planned uses of the surveillance data? What is the legal authority for any data collection?

Where is the organizational home of the surveillance? Is the system integrated with other surveillance and health information systems?