Post-mortem medical examiner samples may be useful for sentinel surveillance of disorders usually detected by antibody determinations on specimens from ill patients or from surveys. We found anti-dengue IgM positivity in 3% (23/780) and anti-dengue IgG positivity in 77% (597/777) of sera obtained at the Puerto Rico medical examiner (Institute of Forensic Sciences) in December 2000, April 2001, ...

BACKGROUND Selection bias is common in clinic-based HIV surveillance. Clinics located in HIV hotspots are often the first to be chosen and monitored, while clinics in less prevalent areas are added to the surveillance system later on. Consequently, the estimated HIV prevalence based on clinic data is substantially distorted, with markedly higher HIV prevalence in the earlier periods and trends ...

Surveillance systems tracking health patterns in animals have potential for early warning of infectious disease in humans, yet there are many challenges that remain before this can be realized. Specifically, there remains the challenge of detecting early warning signals for diseases that are not known or are not part of routine surveillance for named diseases. This paper reports on the developm...

OBJECTIVE The objective was to assess whether HIV prevalence measured among women attending antenatal clinics (ANCs) are representative of prevalence in the local area, or whether estimates may be biased by some women's choice to attend ANCs away from their residential location. We tested the hypothesis that HIV prevalence in towns and periurban areas is underestimated in ANC sentinel surveilla...

BACKGROUND To monitor the prevalence of HIV and syphilis as well as behaviours, a sentinel site for men who have sex with men was established in Harbin in 2002. With additional funding, the sentinel surveillance evolved into annual cross-sectional surveys since 2006. METHODS Behavioural and serological data collected in five consecutive cross-sectional surveys were analysed. SPSS 13.0 was app...

BACKGROUND The Sahel is subject to seasonal hungry periods with increasing rates of malnutrition. In Northern Nigeria, there is no surveillance system and surveys are rare. The objectives were to analyse possible observational bias in a sentinel surveillance system using repeated mixed longitudinal/cross-sectional data and estimate the extent of seasonal variation. METHODS Thirty clusters wer...

OBJECTIVE To revise the national HIV estimates and quantify the magnitude of the HIV epidemic in Ukraine at the end of 2007. DESIGN Internationally recommended methods-the Workbook and Spectrum-were employed to generate the estimates. This enables comparison of results with other countries using the same methodology. METHODS Estimation of the size of most at-risk populations nationally was ...

Influenza causes significant morbidity and mortality each year, with 2-8% of weekly outpatient visits around the United States for influenza-like-illness (ILI) during the peak of the season. Effective use of existing flu surveillance data allows officials to understand and predict current flu outbreaks and can contribute to reductions in influenza morbidity and mortality. Previous work used the...

OBJECTIVE To assess the magnitude and severity of the 2012 influenza season in Victoria, Australia using surveillance data from five sources. METHODS Data from influenza notifications, sentinel general practices, a sentinel hospital network, a sentinel locum service and strain typing databases for 2012 were descriptively analysed. RESULTS Influenza and influenza-like illness activity was mo...

A country-wide sentinel surveillance system was initiated in Germany after implementation of routine varicella vaccination of children >11 months. Sentinel physicians report monthly the number of cases and of severe varicella complications (VC). Case-based questionnaires are completed for VC. We evaluated trend and clinical features of reported VC from April 2005 to March 2009. Reported VC decr...