Public Health Surveillance
Friday 3rd September 2010
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What is public health surveillance?
Public health surveillance is defined as the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data on specific health events for use in the planning, implementation and evaluation of public health programmes.Communicable disease surveillance is the continuous monitoring of the frequency and the distribution of disease, and death, due to infections that can be transmitted from human to human or from animals, food, water or the environment to humans, and the monitoring of risk factors for those infections.
Public health surveillance also encompasses non-communicable conditions including injury, for example poisonings.
Why do we undertake surveillance?
- Estimate magnitude of the problem
- Determine geographic distribution of illness
- Portray the natural history of a disease
- Detect epidemics/define a problem
- Generate hypotheses, stimulate research
- Evaluate control measures
- Monitor changes in infectious agents
- Detect changes in health practices
- Facilitate planning
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