BACKGROUND Estimates of influenza-associated hospitalization are limited in low- and middle-income countries, especially in Africa. OBJECTIVE To estimate the national number of influenza-associated severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) hospitalization in Zambia. METHODS We conducted active prospective hospital-based surveillance for SARI at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) situated ...

BACKGROUND Since 2004, the uptake of seasonal influenza vaccines in Latin America and the Caribbean has markedly increased. However, vaccine effectiveness (VE) is not routinely measured in the region. We assessed the feasibility of using routine surveillance data collected by sentinel hospitals to estimate influenza VE during 2012 against laboratory-confirmed influenza hospitalizations in Costa...

Influenza surveillance systems have been developed to monitor antigenic changes in influenza viruses, guide the selection of annual influenza vaccine strains, and provide viral samples for vaccine production [1]. Subsequently, the need for epidemiological information has complemented virologic data collection. To adequately understand the burden and impact of influenza, morbidityand mortality-r...

The objectives of this article are to describe the severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) surveillance implemented in Louisiana during the 2013-2014 influenza season, present the epidemiology of reported SARI cases, and identify ways to improve this system by incorporating formal SARI surveillance into the influenza surveillance program. Of the 212 SARI cases, 181 (85%) had at least one underl...

BACKGROUND No comprehensive analysis is available on the viral etiology and clinical characterization among children with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) in China during 2009 H1N1 pandemic and post-pandemic period. METHODS Cohort of 370 hospitalized children (1 to 72 months) with SARI from May 2008 to March 2010 was enrolled in this study. Nasopharyngeal aspirate (NPA) specimens wer...

BACKGROUND The World Health Organization recommends the surveillance of influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) to respond effectively to both seasonal influenza epidemics and pandemics. In Korea, the "Hospital-based Influenza Morbidity and Mortality (HIMM)" surveillance system has been operated to monitor ILI and SARI occurrences. MATERIALS AND METHODS A mu...

BACKGROUND After the 2009 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic, we conducted hospital-based severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) surveillance in one central Chinese city to assess disease burden attributable to influenza among adults and adolescents. METHODS We defined an adult SARI case as a hospitalized patient aged ≥ 15 years with temperature ≥38.0°C and at least one of the following: cough, s...

BACKGROUND Pregnant women and infants under 6 months are at risk of influenza-related complications. Limited information exists on their community burden of respiratory viruses. METHODS AND FINDINGS This prospective, observational open cohort study was conducted in Baganuur district, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia during 2013/14 and 2014/15 influenza seasons. Influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe ac...

BACKGROUND Knowing the national disease burden of severe influenza in low-income countries can inform policy decisions around influenza treatment and prevention. We present a novel methodology using locally generated data for estimating this burden. METHODS AND FINDINGS This method begins with calculating the hospitalized severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) incidence for children <5 years...

The image authentication system SARI proposed by Lin and Chang passes JPEG compression and rejects other malicious manipulations. Some vulnerabilities of the system have been reported recently. In this paper, we propose two new attacks that can compromise the SARI system. The first attack is called a histogram attack which modifies DCT coefficients yet maintains the same relationship between an...