Veterinary Epidemiology and Zoonosis

INTRODUCTION

Surveillance

• An essential part of disease control is the ability to document the occurrence of disease with the goal of developing effective control and eradication strategies.
• Surveillance was originally applied to individuals / primarily to contacts of serious communicable diseases (example pneumonic plague), who were closely watched for the development of the first signs of illness.
• Gradually, it was broadened to include diseases and related factors, such that there is no standard definition.
• Is the more intensive form of data recording than monitoring and has three distinct elements.
  • Gathering, recording and analysis of data
  • Dissemination of information to interested parties, so that action can be taken to control diseases
• “Surveillance is the continuous investigation of a given population to detect the occurrence of disease for control purposes, which may involve testing of part of a population” (Office internationale des epizooties, 2002)

Monitoring

• Routine collection of information on disease, productivity and other characteristics possibly related to them in a population.