What is the “national communicable disease surveillance system”?
Many countries have developed surveillance activities for communicable diseases in order to monitor diseases with a high burden, detect outbreaks of epidemic-prone disease and monitor progress towards national or international control/eradication targets. In this sense, surveillance of communicable diseases is a national function; and the sum of all surveillance activities represents the “national communicable disease surveillance system”. The various activities may be integrated into the broader Health Information System (HIS) or may be carried out independently. Surveillance activities have developed in an uneven way. Many activities are managed by different vertical diseases control programmes. In other cases the surveillance function is far removed from the control efforts: data are collected by central statistics offices on a large number of health events, many of which do not represent priorities for the country. In some situations, surveillance for particular health events has b
