Detection of pathogenic viruses in the urban wastewater in Kuwait-implications for monitoring viral disease outbreaks.

Effective surveillance for epidemic-prone viral diseases is essential for emergency preparedness to respond to threats and occurrences of pandemics. While it is difficult and expensive to conduct health facility-based surveillance, there is a growing interest in conducting sewage-based epidemiological studies to monitor the health of the urban population because of the relative ease of sample collection and the availability of advanced molecular techniques for the detection of pathogens in the sewage. Sewage samples offer unique means to study the aggregate health of the population as opposed to the monitoring of the health of any individual by traditional methods.