OBJECTIVE To examine the quality of HIV sero-surveillance systems in countries by 2002, as well as trends between 1995 and 2002. METHODS The quality of countries' surveillance systems was scored for five years: 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2002. Sero-surveillance data were compiled from the US Census Bureau's HIV/AIDS Surveillance Database, the EuroHIV database, and from countries' national HI...

Video surveillance is increasing significance approach as organizations seek to safe guard physical and capital assets. At the same time, the necessity to observe more people, places, and things coupled with a desire to pull out more useful information from video data is motivating new demands for scalability, capabilities, and capacity. These demands are exceeding the facilities of traditional...

Before 1999, the United States had no appropriated funding for arboviral surveillance, and many states conducted no such surveillance. After emergence of West Nile virus (WNV), federal funding was distributed to state and selected local health departments to build WNV surveillance systems. The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists conducted assessments of surveillance capacity of res...

BACKGROUND Emerging animal and zoonotic diseases and increasing international trade have resulted in an increased demand for veterinary surveillance systems. However, human and financial resources available to support government veterinary services are becoming more and more limited in many countries world-wide. Intuitively, issues that present higher risks merit higher priority for surveillanc...

Epidemiologic surveillance is the ongoing and systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data in the process of describing and monitoring a health event. This information is used for planning, implementing, and evaluating public health interventions and programs. Surveillance data are used both to determine the need for public health action and to assess the effectiveness of ...

The ultimate aim of performance evaluation is to improve the system efficiency. Overall efficiency of the system is a combination of three factors: system functionality, performance and cost. Whereas system functionality improvement and cost optimisation are usually well understood and implemented the third factor of system performance is usually under prioritized. The development and improveme...

Development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens our ability to treat common and life threatening infections. Identifying the emergence of AMR requires strengthening of surveillance for AMR, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) where the burden of infection is highest and health systems are least able to respond. This work aimed, through a combination of desk-based inv...

Assessing actual abuse of prescribed medications requires postmarketing surveillance. In this article we discuss general systems of postmarketing surveillance that exist as of the end of 2002 in the United States and two medication-specific surveillance systems that were devised and tested. The two specific surveillance systems are compared with limitations highlighted. Postmarketing surveillan...

Introduction Along with commensurate funding, an increased emphasis on syndromic surveillance systems occurred post September 11, 2001 and the subsequent anthrax attacks. Since then, many syndromic surveillance systems have evolved and have ever-increasing functionality and visualization tools. As outbreak detection using these systems has demonstrated an equivocal track record, epidemiologists...

I. Role of Surveillance in Disease Elimination Programs In routine disease control programs, traditional, passive disease surveillance systems are usually adequate to meet program demands despite their limitations. In contrast, in disease elimination or eradication programs, routine surveillance activities are inadequate once the goal is near. In advanced disease elimination and eradication pro...