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The
Nature of Infectious Disease Surveillance
Disease
surveillance systems provide for the ongoing collection, analysis,
and dissemination of data to prevent and control disease.
Disease surveillance data are used by public health professionals,
medical professionals, private industry, and interested members
of the general public in numerous ways:
- to
identify cases for investigation and follow-up
- to
estimate the magnitude of a health problem and follow trends
in its incidence and distribution
- to
formulate and evaluate control and prevention measures
- to
detect outbreaks or epidemics and generate appropriate interventions
- to
monitor changes in infectious agents (e.g., antibiotic resistance,
emerging infections)
- to
facilitate epidemiologic and laboratory research
- to
detect changes in health practice (e.g., impact of use of
new diagnostic methods on case counts)
- to
facilitate planning (e.g., allocation of program resources,
policy development)
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