Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of routine syndromic surveillance of respiratory infections, specifically new cases of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI). This surveillance often relies on questionnaires carried out by research nurses or transcriptions of doctor's notes, but existing, routinely collected electronic healthcare data sets are increasingly being used for such surveillance. We investigated how patient diagnosis codes, recorded within such data sets, could be used to capture SARI trends in Scotland.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Human and animal cases of Rift Valley fever (RVF) are typically only reported during large outbreaks. The occurrence of RVF cases that go undetected by national surveillance systems in the period between these outbreaks is considered likely. The last reported cases of RVF in Tanzania occurred during a large outbreak in 2007-2008.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFever is one of the most common reasons for seeking health care globally and most human pathogens are zoonotic. We conducted a systematic review to describe the occurrence and distribution of zoonotic causes of human febrile illness reported in malaria endemic countries. We included data from 53 (48·2%) of 110 malaria endemic countries and 244 articles that described diagnosis of 30 zoonoses in febrile people.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEast Afr Health Res J
March 2017
East Africa has one of the world's fastest growing human populations-many of whom are dependent on livestock-as well as some of the world's largest wildlife populations. Humans, livestock, and wildlife often interact closely, intimately linking human, animal, and environmental health. The concept of One Health captures this interconnectedness, including the social structures and beliefs driving interactions between species and their environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToxocara infection occurs through ingestion of parasite eggs excreted by dogs and cats, and can cause severe morbidity. The burden of disease in England and Wales is not well described, and the impact of public health campaigns conducted in the mid-1990s is uncertain. This paper uses data from two extensive databases to explore the trends in this disease in England and Wales from the 1970s to 2009.
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