Planning an integrated disease surveillance and response system: a matrix of skills and activities
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BioMed Central
Open Access
Research article
Planning an integrated disease surveillance and response system: a matrix of skills and activities Helen N Perry*1, Sharon M McDonnell2, Wondimagegnehu Alemu3, Peter Nsubuga1, Stella Chungong4, Mac W Otten Jr1, Paul S Lusambadikassa5 and Stephen B Thacker1 Address: 1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA, 2Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH, USA, 3World Health Organization, Regional Office for Africa, Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, 4World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland and 5World Health Organization, Regional Office for Africa, Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo Email: Helen N Perry* - [email protected]; Sharon M McDonnell - [email protected]; Wondimagegnehu Alemu - [email protected]; Peter Nsubuga - [email protected]; Stella Chungong - [email protected]; Mac W Otten - [email protected]; Paul S Lusamba-dikassa - [email protected]; Stephen B Thacker - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 15 August 2007 BMC Medicine 2007, 5:24
doi:10.1186/1741-7015-5-24
Received: 19 October 2006 Accepted: 15 August 2007
This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/5/24 © 2007 Perry et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: The threat of a global influenza pandemic and the adoption of the World Health Organization (WHO) International Health Regulations (2005) highlight the value of wellcoordinated, functional disease surveillance systems. The resulting demand for timely information challenges public health leaders to design, develop and implement efficient, flexible and comprehensive systems that integrate staff, resources, and information systems to conduct infectious disease surveillance and response. To understand what resources an integrated disease surveillance and response system would require, we analyzed surveillance requirements for 19 priority infectious diseases targeted for an integrated disease surveillance and response strategy in the WHO African region. Methods: We conducted a systematic task analysis to identify and standardize surveillance objectives, surveillance case definitions, action thresholds, and recommendations for 19 priority infectious diseases. We grouped the findings according to surveillance and response functions and related them to community, health facility, district, national and international levels. Results: The outcome of our analysis is a matrix of generic skills and activities essential for an integrated system. We documented how planners used the matrix to assist in finding gaps in current systems, prioritizing plans of action, clarifying indicators for monitoring progress, and developing instructional goals for applied epidemiology and in-service training programs. Conclusion: The
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