Event-based surveillance in north-western Ethiopia: experience and lessons learnt in the field.

Thursday, 23rd of June 2016

Western Pac Surveill Response J. 2015 Aug 17;6(3):22-7. doi: 10.5365/WPSAR.2015.6.2.002.

Event-based surveillance in north-western Ethiopia: experience and lessons learnt in the field.

Toyama Y¹ Ota M¹ Beyene BB².

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Abstract

This study piloted an event-based surveillance system at the health centre (HC) level in Ethiopia. The system collects rumours in the community and registers them in rumour logbooks to record events of disease outbreaks and public health emergencies. Descriptive analysis was conducted on the events captured at the 59 study HCs in the Amhara Region in north-western Ethiopia between October 2013 and November 2014. A total of 126 rumours were registered at two thirds of the HCs during the study period. The average event reporting time was 3.8 days; response time of the HCs was 0.6 days resulting in a total response time of 4.4 days. The most commonly reported rumours were measles-related (n = 90 71%). These rumours followed a similar pattern of measles cases reported in the routine surveillance system. The largest proportion of rumours were reported by community members (n = 38 36%) followed by health post workers (n = 36 29%) who were normally informed by the community members about the rumours. This surveillance system was established along with an existing indicator-based surveillance system and was simple to implement. The implementation cost was minimal requiring only printing and distribution of rumour logbooks to the HCs and brief orientations to focal persons. In countries where routine surveillance is still weak an event-based surveillance system similar to this should be considered as a supplementary tool for disease monitoring.