Traditional and syndromic surveillance of infectious diseases and pathogens

Abstract

Background: Infectious diseases remain a major public health problem worldwide. Hence, their surveillance is critical. Currently, many surveillance strategies and systems are in use around the world. An inventory of the data, surveillance strategies, and surveillance systems developed worldwide for the surveillance of infectious diseases is presented herein, with emphasis on the role of the microbiology laboratory in surveillance.

Methods: The data, strategies, and systems used around the world for the surveillance of infectious diseases and pathogens, along with current issues and trends, were reviewed.

Results: Twelve major classes of data were identified on the basis of their timing relative to infection, resources available, and type of surveillance. Two primary strategies were compared: disease-specific surveillance and syndromic surveillance. Finally, 262 systems implemented worldwide for the surveillance of infections were registered and briefly described, with a focus on those based on microbiological data from laboratories.

Conclusions: There is currently a wealth of available data on infections, which has been growing with the recent emergence of new technologies. Concurrently with the expansion of computer resources and networks, these data will allow the optimization of real-time detection and notification of infections.

Keywords: Clinical microbiology laboratories; Epidemiology; Infectious diseases; Surveillance.

Fig. 1

Main sources of data used by syndromic and disease-specific surveillance systems.

Fig. 2

Infectious disease surveillance systems described around the world, January 2009 to June 13, 2014. The map is available at https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=z4TNutoSpTfw.k7NzPhL00pmc. The virus image represents surveillance systems focusing on viruses, the bacterium image represents surveillance systems focusing on bacteria, the fungus image represents surveillance systems focusing on fungi, and the polymicrobial image represents surveillance systems monitoring various different pathogens .

Fig. 3

Summary of the main characteristics of the 262 surveillance systems registered from January 2009 to June 13, 2014. (a) Number of international and national surveillance systems, and those that are neither. (b) Number of surveillance systems that are disease-specific (traditional surveillance) and those that are syndromic. (c) Classification of the surveillance systems according to what they monitor.

Fig. 4

Global change in the number of publications dealing with “surveillance system” AND infect* from 1966 to 2013.