Surveillance

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COMMUNICABLE DISEASE MANAGEMENT PROTOCOL MANUAL

Communicable Disease
Surveillance

Manitoba
Health
Public Health

Communicable Disease Control Unit

Introduction

Types of Surveillance

Surveillance may be defined as the routine collection,
analysis and dissemination of various data that
describe the occurrence and distribution of disease,
events or conditions. Surveillance is a continuous and
systematic process consisting of three primary
activities:

There are two types of surveillance commonly used:

1. Collection of relevant data for a specified
population, time period and/or geographic area;
2. Meaningful analysis of data;
3. Routine dissemination of data with
accompanying interpretation.
The primary objective of disease surveillance is to
determine the extent of infections and the risk of
disease transmission, so that prevention and control
measures can be applied both effectively and
efficiently to minimize the burden of illness.
Surveillance data must be timely and complete to
accurately reflect the occurrence and distribution of
disease.
To achieve this objective, health care professionals
working in communicable disease control programs
must carry out the following activities:
• Identify and describe each individual having an
infection as quickly as possible after exposure.
• Determine the source of infection.
• Identify exposed individuals to whom the infection
may have been transmitted.
• Specify the frequency of occurrence of infection in
population groups at risk by person, place and
time.
• Identify populations that are experiencing, or might
experience, an increased frequency of infection.
• Prepare and distribute surveillance reports to health
care professionals participating in disease prevention
and control activities.

1. Passive disease surveillance refers to the receipt of
reports of infections/disease from physicians,
laboratories and other health care professionals
required to submit such reports as defined by
public health legislation.
2. Active disease surveillance is also based on public
health legislation and refers to daily, weekly or
monthly contacting of physicians, hospitals,
laboratories, schools or others to “actively” search
for cases. This type of surveillance is usually
seasonal to coincide with periods of high disease
frequency and generally yields a much higher
percentage of actual cases as compared to passive
surveillance. Active surveillance is used also during
outbreaks to identify additional cases.

Sources of Surveillance Data
In Manitoba, several sources of data are used for
surveillance:
• Laboratory reports of infections.
• Morbidity reports from health care professionals
describing individual cases (e.g., pertussis).
• Morbidity reports from health care professionals
describing groups of cases (e.g., influenza-like
illness).
• Morbidity reports from Manitoba Health (e.g.,
patients admitted to hospital with a communicable
disease).
• Reports of outbreak investigations.
• Mortality reports from Vital Statistics and/or health
care professionals.
• Active surveillance for specific infections/diseases.
• Special surveys (i.e., hospital admissions, disease
registers, serologic surveys).
• Absenteeism data from school or workplaces for
selected diseases (e.g., influenza).

1

COMMUNICABLE DISEASE MANAGEMENT PROTOCOL MANUAL

Health-care professionals, laboratory personnel, or
others (e.g., day-care workers/school teachers) aware of
an individual with a reportable communicable disease
should notify the appropriate public health officials.

2

Public health staff will initiate a disease-specific
follow-up investigation as indicated for each disease
protocol, and ensure that adequate prevention and
control measures are taken.

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