Public Health Surveillance System

At the peak of the 2014-2015 Seasonal Influenza Pandemic in the United States, 9.3% of all deaths reported in the 122 Cities Mortality Reporting System were attributed to Pneumonia and Influenza (P&I), underscoring how lethal the flu can be, especially to people who are already sick, children, and the elderly. In the first week of February 2015, over 60% of influenza-associated hospitalizations involved patients 65 and older, the highest rate since the CDC began tracking that data in 2005. Extrapolating that, more than 92,000 people aged 65 and older had been hospitalized

This information will help investigators cluster the symptoms with a particular disease and rule out irrelevant information. The surveillance of the components gather in this step will put a perspective on the abnormal health events that are occurring on the outbreak timeline.

People are misled to believe that flu-related deaths are based on body counts, lab tests or autopsies. Shockingly, the numbers of flu deaths are based on a statistical guess and assumptions made from a computer model (Growe). Dr. Michael Gardam, director of the infection prevention and control unit at the University Health Network in Toronto and Dr. Tom Jefferson, a researcher with the Cochrane Collaboration were interviewed by a CBC News reported Kelly Growe. Both doctors stated that the computer model is unreliable and is nothing more than guesswork that is far from the truth. Dr. Michael Graham supported his statement by explaining how “one model counts all respiratory and circulatory deaths - that’s death from heart and lung failure - as flu deaths. Deaths from pneumonia, even though not all pneumonia is caused by flu” are categorized within the model as flu deaths during the flu season. Ironically, according to U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, “people who caught the Spanish flu in 1918(the world’s worst pandemic flu in history that lead to 20 million deaths worldwide) did not die from it, but from the complications caused by bacteria, such as pneumonia” (“Pandemic Flu History”). Statistics Canada stated that there were about 300 influenza-related deaths each year between 2000 and 2008. Following the flu pandemic, H1N1 hit in 2009, the final count of flu-related deaths among 34

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 is still being discussed. In the public health sector it is used as an example of the viruses potential power, if we do not continue to prepare, educate the public and vaccinate on a global scale. Let’s think back to that time were science and technology was not as advanced. Quarantine and isolation measures meant little to no travel, remaining home and less time spent in the public, “diagnosing influenza became even more difficult because an especially virulent form of the disease had erupted” (Untied States Department of Health and Human Services, 2015).

One way that national and international agencies are involved with state and local health departments is the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS), which is a nationwide collaboration that allows local, state, territorial, federal, and international health agencies to share information about disease-related issues. Health departments work with healthcare providers, hospitals, laboratories, and others to increase monitoring, control, and prevention of diseases which allows for collection, analysis, and sharing of data and works to increase awareness of potential outbreaks. By interacting with one another, public health agencies are able to provide up-to-date information for their constituents and can even have

It is important to have systems that are constructed similarly and able to communicate with each other. Syndromic surveillance has been accepted as a way to monitor disease outbreaks and bioterrorism attacks (Chen et al., 2010). According to Henning (2004), “Syndromic surveillance systems seek to use existing health data in real time to provide immediate analysis and feedback to those charged with investigation and follow-up of potential outbreaks.” Additionally, “The fundamental objective of syndromic surveillance is to identify illness clusters early, before diagnoses are confirmed and reported to public health agencies, and to mobilize a rapid response, thereby reducing morbidity and mortality” (Henning, 2004). Evaluation of the success of this type of surveillance can be monitored based on the data reported to and archived by the

The objective of the core public health is to educate, and prevent disease within communities. In this particular case, the public health nurses can use an inoculation program to prevent the new strain of influenza. The syndromic surveillance system is public health data would use to determine the need for this program. The syndromic surveillance system is a computer system that is used to control all information sources that concerns public health, and early detection of the infectious CDC) disease (McGonigle, 2014, Pg.302). The Public health data can be found at the center for disease control In order for this program to be successful, we need to collect data from ambulance log sheets, school or work absenteeism, prescriptions filled, retail

The virus has been studied in detail during 2009-2010. Being a complex virus, it is important to study the current scenario and the trends of the circulating virus. During 2015, the incidence of pandemic H1N1 2009 influenza virus among patients presenting with ILI, diagnosed in our tertiary care hospital during the study period was 18.6%. In the 2012-2013 the incidence of pandemic H1N1 2009 influenza virus among patients presenting with ILI, was 8.20% indicating a sharp increase in the number of cases. 9 After 2010, the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza A reappeared in several northern and western states of the country during the winter months of 2012-2013. The presently ongoing resurgence since December 2014 however appears to be worse than the previous one, leading to over 30,000 cases and 2000 deaths countrywide (as of 28th March,2015) as compared to 5044 cases and 405 deaths in 2012 and 5250 cases and 692 deaths in 2013.10 The resurgent waves lead to more number of hospitalizations and deaths due to pdmH1N1 as compared to the rest part of the year and appear at an interval of 1.5-2

Influenza A (H1N1) is a virus with multiple strains that causes human influenza. The H1N1 are endemic in humans and causes influenza-like illness during the flu season. In 2009, when the influenza virus emerged, it highlighted the importance of having infrastructures to conduct research. This would allow public health officials to manage patients for emerging viruses. Much of the surveillance systems for influenza are laboratory-based or anti-viral resistance monitoring. The lab base focuses on variant virus strains for vaccination. Anti-viral resistance includes clinical data on hospital or outpatients with no follow up. Much of the data from the previous cohort studies on the clinical outcomes and prognostic factors of influenza-infected

The Rapid Risk Factor Surveillance System (RRFSS) is a survey carried out by the Institute of Social Research (ISR), at York University (Region of Peel, n.d; RRFSS, 2018a). Various public health units, located in Ontario, can enroll into the RRFSS to have IRS collect public health related data on their behalf (RRFSS, 2018b). The telephone survey involves IRS randomly contacting Ontarians, who are a minimum of 18 years of age residing in the participating health unit regions, to collect data on various health topics that is of interest to the local public health unit (York Region, 2004). The IRS uses Computer Assisted Telephone Interview system and delivers data to each health unit in the Statistical Package for the Social

According to APTR (No Date), surveillance is the interventional information that includes assessment, policy development, and assurance. It used in estimation the problem degree, resolution of disease spread geographically, epidemics revealing, hypothesis initiation, preventive measure evaluation, and the alteration monitoring in infectious applies.

Local Public Health System Assessment (LPHSA) is used to identify the components, capacities, activities, and competencies of local public health system in the community and how does the LPHS provide the ten essential public health services to the community.

Public health surveillance is the continuous collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, which can be disseminated “to public health programs to stimulate public health action” (Thacker, Qualters, & Lee, 2012). Importation gathered by the surveillance can

There are six core functions of epidemiology (Dicker, Coronado, Koo, & Parrish, 2012). The first function is public health surveillance. Public health surveillance can be defined as the method of collecting and analyzing data to better serve the health and well-being of the public efficiently and effectively. For example, if hospitals start seeing more cases of tuberculosis epidemiologists can analyze collected data to find a pattern or commonality among those who were treated. If they find that the majority of patients are from the same geographical location, they may want to concentrate their field investigation efforts in that area. Public health surveillance is important to the study of

The world has experienced a total of four pandemics within the twentieth century. These pandemics, as horrific and deadly as they are, have brought so much more positive advances to our health care system and how we prepare for biological threats. Although we are in the twenty-first century and we have advanced so far in healthcare, there is still the possibility of a deadly pandemic.