Disease surveillance monitors the spread of diseases to predict and prevent outbreaks. WHO coordinates global responses and maintains websites and teams in countries where diseases occur. Technical challenges include expensive testing and limited information, hindering progress in formulating policies.
Disease surveillance is the process of monitoring the spread of certain diseases in order to establish their progression and minimize the risks of an outbreak. In addition to predicting the damage caused by an epidemic, disease surveillance also hopes to increase information about possible factors that may contribute to disease. Most disease surveillance requires the collection of information such as the number of cases of a particular disease from hospitals and medical institutions. Thanks to the advancement in the way people communicate, reporting this data has become easier.
Many health institutions, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), are able to quickly report cases of illnesses and deaths resulting from certain ailments. This allows them to inform the population of certain diseases that are becoming rampant in a particular place. Preventive measures are therefore often employed to prevent further spread of the disease.
For more than 40 years, WHO has required many nations to report cases of infectious diseases. During this time, diseases such as typhoid, smallpox, cholera and yellow fever were reported to the organization and information about them was made known to the public. In 2005, several cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and polio were also reported to WHO.
In addition to being the leading disease surveillance agency, WHO coordinates global responses to any major disease outbreak. It has several websites dedicated to various diseases and maintains dedicated teams in countries where such ailments occur. In 2004, the organization’s Beijing office produced daily updates on the SARS outbreak in China, keeping the public vigilant and well informed about the disease. WHO also has its own specialized program called Epidemic and Pandemic Alert Response which detects, verifies and responds to disease threats such as bird flu, anthrax, dengue and hepatitis, among many other infectious diseases.
There are also some technical challenges in disease surveillance. For one, the cost of testing for some diseases can be very expensive. The limited availability of often critical information for the study of some diseases can hinder progress in disease surveillance. An example is the case of avian influenza A(H5N1), which is prevalent among wild birds in Asia and Africa. There is little data available on the population of these wild birds in the region. This generally prevents researchers and scientists from making progress in formulating policies to combat the spread of the aforementioned disease.
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