History and Present State of the Infectious Disease Surveillance and Reporting System for Schools in Taiwan

C. Y. Hsu ； H. S. Wu ； T. M Huang ； C. F. Lee ； C. H. Chou

《Epidemiology Bulletin》 21卷3期 (2005/03) Pp. 59-82

https://doi.org/10.6525/TEB.200503_21(3).0001

並列摘要

According to statistical documentation of the Center for Disease Control of Taiwan (CDC-Taiwan), there were several rather severe outbreaks of infectious diseases, which occurred at various schools in Taiwan over a one-year period beginning in September 1993. Since elementary schools are places of high population density and individuals of lower resistance to disease, if one individual is infected, the outbreak of a disease can easily reach epidemic proportions. For the purpose of effectively detecting the start of infectious disease on school grounds and swiftly arresting or controlling it, CDC-Taiwan launched the ”School-based Surveillance System” (SS) and started promoting it among all public elementary schools across the country. So far, 448 schools have signed up to take part in the system, and in February 2004 the SS joined forces with an existing ”Student Health Information Administration System” of the Ministry of Education. Then the system took advantage of an Internet online reporting approach to reach a set goal of digitalizing information management as ell as speeding up the process of such infectious disease monitoring.
The main disease targets of this SS are those apt to become prevalent on school grounds. The system has so far accumulated in its files relevant data over the past two consecutive years, which enables us to have a preliminary set of incident rate curves of various infectious diseases in established school circumstances. For instance, the incident rate curve of influenza-like illness (ILI) diseases shows that such a rate on school grounds reaches a peak a few weeks after the end of winter school vacation (the 8(superscript th) to 14(superscript th) week of the year), which looks quite different from a similar chart for the general public (with a peak located between the 2(superscript nd) to 5(superscript th) week) as a survey result by the ”Sentinel Physician Surveillance System” (SPS). Incidentally, the SS is not active during both summer and winter school vacations for obvious reasons, so our SS data were left blank in these two periods. However, as to chickenpox surveillance, results from the two surveillance systems resemble each other fairly closely. Another example is that the incident rate curve of enterovirus among school children established by the SS displayed a maximum prevalent period starting from the 18(superscript th) to the 20(superscript th) week (equivalent to late April to early May) of the year, which coincides exactly with the results gathered by the SPS.