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. 2017 Apr 6;22(14):30502.
doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2017.22.14.30502.

ECDC Round Table Report and ProMed-mail most useful international information sources for the Netherlands Early Warning Committee

Paul Bijkerk  1 , Annelie A Monnier  1   2 , Ewout B Fanoy  1   3 , Katina Kardamanidis  1 , Ingrid Hm Friesema  1 , Mirjam J Knol  1
Affiliations

ECDC Round Table Report and ProMed-mail most useful international information sources for the Netherlands Early Warning Committee

Paul Bijkerk et al. Euro Surveill. .

Abstract

The Netherlands Early Warning Committee (NEWC) aims to identify infectious diseases causing a potential threat to Dutch public health. Threats are assessed and published as (information) alerts for public health experts. To identify threats from abroad, the NEWC screens 10 sources reporting disease outbreaks each week. To identify the sources essential for complete and timely reporting, we retrospectively analysed 178 international alerts published between 31 January 2013 and 30 January 2014. In addition, we asked the four NEWC coordinators about the required time to scan the information sources. We documented the date and source in which the signal was detected. The ECDC Round Table (RT) Report and ProMED-mail were the most complete and timely sources, reporting 140 of 178 (79%) and 121 of 178 (68%) threats respectively. The combination of both sources reported 169 (95%) of all threats in a timely manner. Adding any of the other sources resulted in minor increases in the total threats found, but considerable additional time investment per additional threat. Only three potential relevant threats (2%) would have been missed by only using the ECDC RT Report and ProMed-mail. We concluded that using only the ECDC RT Report and ProMed-mail to identify threats from abroad maintains a sensitive Early Warning System.

Keywords: Europe; The Netherlands; epidemiology, early warning; surveillance.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure
Figure
Cumulative percentage of timely reported threats in 10 international information sources screened by the coordinators of the NEWC and time required starting with ECDC Round Table Report and adding different sources, the Netherlands, January 2013– January 2014
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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