Sentinel monitoring of general community health during the 1998 World Football Cup

Abstract

Background: Present knowledge of the consequences of mass gatherings for the health of the community is scant. Our objective was to determine the impact of the 1998 World Football Cup on general community health.

Methods: We set up an electronic sentinel disease surveillance, before, during and after the World Football Cup tournament held in France from June 10 to July 12, 1998. Medical activity, and the daily number of cases of communicable, environmental, and societal diseases relating to mass gatherings were surveyed. The incidence of the pathologies surveyed in real time during and after the World Cup versus the pre-Cup reference period was the main outcome measure. Five sentinel networks participated, comprising 553 general practitioners, 60 hospital adult emergency departments, 19 private emergency community services, 4 community health centres, and the medical centre of the Paris airports.

Results: Throughout the 66-day study period, physicians reported 558,829 medical encounters via 21,532 connections to the computer. Compared to the reference period, the level of medical activity reflected by the pathological items surveyed remained stable during the study period.

Conclusion: The 1998 World Football Cup had no epidemiological impact on general community health, as observed by sentinel networks located downstream of the specific health services provided by the French authorities to ensure high standards of safety.