Publicatie

Publication date

WHO Regional Office for Europe guidance for influenza surveillance in humans.

Brown, C.S., Andraghetti, R., Paget, J. WHO Regional Office for Europe guidance for influenza surveillance in humans. Kopenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2009. 144 p.
Download the PDF
Recent international mandates, and the emergent circulation of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus in human populations, call for strengthening influenza surveillance to better target seasonal influenza control programmes and support pandemic preparedness. This document provides technical guidance to establish sentinel site surveillance to assess the virologic and epidemiologic characteristics of respiratory disease leading to outpatient consultation or hospitalization that may be caused by influenza (seasonal or pandemic) or another respiratory virus. A simple, broad case definition for severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) is provided as a standard to enumerate severe influenza infections leading to hospitalization. Case definitions of influenza-like-illness (ILI) and acute respiratory infection (ARI) are proposed for the surveillance of outpatient illness related to mild influenza and other respiratory pathogens. This guidance document also contains practical suggestions for implementing hospital and outpatient-based site surveillance, including: criteria for selecting sentinel sites; forms for epidemiological data collection; procedures for collecting, testing, storing and transporting laboratory specimens; report templates for weekly and annual data summaries; and pandemic preparedness support functions. This document complements, not replaces Human infection with pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus: updated interim WHO guidance on global surveillance. (aut.ref.)