The management of an organisational outbreak of meningococcal disease using the national Guidelines for the early clinical and public health management of meningococcal disease in Australia (the Guidelines), could be considered a relatively straightforward task. Nevertheless, discretional judgements are often still required by the outbreak control team, as no guidelines can fully cover every ev...

Algorithms for detecting anomalous events can be divided into those that are designed to detect specific diseases and those that are non-specific in what they detect. Specific detection methods determine if patterns in the data are consistent with known outbreak diseases, as for example influenza. These methods are usually Bayesian. Non-specific detection methods attempt broadly to detect devia...

In 2007, Australia experienced the most extensive equine influenza outbreak observed in recent years. Extraordinary measures were rapidly implemented in order to control and prevent the spread of this highly contagious disease. The control strategy involved stringent movement restriction and disease surveillance, seconded by emergency post-outbreak vaccination strategies. Sixteen months after t...

In Costa Rica, an annual outbreak of infant diarrheal disease (December and January) was reported since 1976, and rotavirus was incriminated later as the main etiological agent (1976-1981). Apparently the disease has not been systematically studied in Costa Rica after 1981. For that reason the occurrence of the outbreak was retrospectively documented for 1993-1995 and etiology was studied in 48...

BACKGROUND In computer supported outbreak detection, a statistical method is applied to a collection of cases to detect any excess cases for a particular disease. Whether a detected aberration is a true outbreak is decided by a human expert. We present a technical framework designed and implemented at the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control for computer supported outbreak detection...

This paper considers the potential problems that may militate against the adoption of organic poultry production in Nigeria. Factors identified include: higher risk of diseases like coccidiosis and Newcastle disease, disease prevention and control / herd health management, disease containment in times of outbreak, land acquisition (land tenure system), market economies / cost-benefit ratio, pas...