Question 1

What is the single most important reason for distributing regular surveillance summaries?&#10;A)To document epidemiologic investigations&#10;B)To provide timely information on disease patterns and trends to those who need this information&#10;C)To provide feedback to those who provided the data&#10;D)To publish the results of surveillance programmes in peer&#8208;reviewed journals&#10;E)Regular surveillance summaries should not be distributed because the information is confidential

Accepted Answer

The primary purposes of distributing surveillance summaries is to provide
timely information about disease occurrence to those in the community who need to
know.It is of course important to also feed this information back to those who provided
the data (C) and in some situations surveillance data may lead to peer‐reviewed
publications (D) but this is not the primary goal.

Question 2

Evaluation of a surveillance programme should address which of the following? (Select all that apply)&#10;A)The timeliness of the information it produces&#10;B)The sensitivity of the system to detect cases&#10;C)The number of peer&#8208;reviewed publications it generates&#10;D)The effectiveness of the measures used to control the disease under surveillance&#10;E)Cost

Accepted Answer

An effective surveillance system needs to detect what it was set up
to detect and to produce timely information in a cost‐effective way.These criteria will
help determine whether a surveillance program is detecting what is was set up to
detect and is able to cope with changes (i.e.outbreaks) (B), whether it is producing data
in time for an appropriate response (A) and whether it is doing so in the cheapest way
possible (E).Disease control (D) is not a part of surveillance and the publication output
(C) is irrelevant.

Question 3

Which of the following are forms of surveillance? (Select all that apply)&#10;A)Digital surveillance&#10;B)Rumour surveillance&#10;C)Passive surveillance&#10;D)Syndromic surveillance&#10;E)Indirect surveillance

Accepted Answer

All are forms of surveillance except E.Digital surveillance refers
to use of the internet to detect events or outbreaks (e.g.via monitoring of the terms
typed into search engines) while rumour surveillance involves monitoring media reports
and email list server sources.Passive surveillance requires the Reporter to proactively
provide the surveillance information rather than the health departments actively
contacting Reporters to collect this, and syndromic surveillance describes surveillance
for cases based on clinical signs and symptoms rather than a specific diagnosis.

Question 4

Which of the following activities form part of public health surveillance? (Select all that apply)&#10;A)Data collection&#10;B)Data analysis&#10;C)Data interpretation&#10;D)Data dissemination&#10;E)Intervention

Accepted Answer

Surveillance is defined as the: 'systematic and continuous
collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, closely integrated with the timely and
coherent dissemination of the results and assessment to those who have the right to
know so that action can be taken' (Porta, A Dictionary of Epidemiology, 6th Edition.
2014).It provides the information required for decision makers to develop and
implement the best strategies to prevent and control disease but does not itself include
any action taken to control or prevent disease.

Question 5

For surveillance, the public health importance of a disease is determined by which of the following? (Select all that apply)&#10;A)The incidence of the disease&#10;B)The severity of the disease&#10;C)The duration of the disease&#10;D)The results of randomised controlled trials&#10;E)The cost of the disease to society

Accepted Answer

The more common and the more severe a disease is and the
greater the cost to society, the greater its public health importance.The duration of a
disease is not relevant (unless this is related to severity and cost) and RCTs per se are
not going to help - although if these show that intervention (e.g.screening or a vaccine)
can reduce the impact of a disease this might increase its importance.

Question 6

Which of the following statements could be used to describe sentinel surveillance? (Select all that apply)&#10;A)It requires a very sophisticated data collection system&#10;B)It can play a valuable role in resource&#8208;poor countries&#10;C)It requires all healthcare providers to report cases&#10;D)It relies on reporting of cases from a small number of sources to give an indication of the level of disease in the whole community&#10;E)It is always conducted at a national level

Accepted Answer

Sentinel surveillance is valuable in a resource‐poor setting because it
usually only requires collection of relatively limited information from a sample of the
population (e.g.specific clinics in a community).It can also be a quick and inexpensive
alternative for acquiring trend or outbreak data that may not be picked up by routine
passive surveillance.

Question 7

The case definition used for surveillance of a health problem should always be the&#10;same as the case definition used for clinical (treatment) purposes.

Accepted Answer

A case definition for surveillance should be clear, understandable,
acceptable, and implementable by those who are required to apply it.However, it need
not use the same criteria that are used for clinical purposes and can be broader or
narrower than a clinical definition.For example, surveillance for polio requires reporting
of all cases of acute flaccid paralysis but not all will be confirmed as polio.Similarly,
health‐care providers might treat patients on the basis of their clinical features without
laboratory confirmation, the case definition for surveillance might require laboratory
confirmation.

Question 8

Which of the following might be the subject of a public health surveillance programme? (Select all that apply)&#10;A)Infectious diseases&#10;B)Chronic diseases&#10;C)Injuries&#10;D)Risk factors for disease&#10;E)Presence of viruses in mosquitoes

Accepted Answer

Public health surveillance targets many different health?
related conditions among humans including infectious diseases like measles that are on
the notifiable diseases list, chronic diseases like cancer, injury, risk factors for disease
such as obesity and also the presence of infectious agents in their animal or insect hosts
e.g.Dengue virus in mosquitoes.

Question 9

Which of the following statements describe event&#8208;based surveillance? (Select all that apply)&#10;A)It is based on a specific case definition&#10;B)It is based on symptoms, signs, or other characteristics of a disease&#10;C)It requires diagnosis based on a laboratory test&#10;D)It is based on reports of individual cases of disease&#10;E)It plays a role in detecting potential outbreaks of disease

Accepted Answer

Event‐based surveillance aims to detect events of public health
significance such as potential outbreaks and it usually relies on reporting of groups of
cases based on a broad case definition to ensure that the system is sensitive (cases are
not missed) rather than specific.

Question 10

Common uses of public health surveillance include which of the following? (Select all that apply)&#10;A)To identify the relationship between a risk factor and a disease&#10;B)To inform health policy&#10;C)To identify the health costs associated with various health conditions&#10;D)To monitor the introduction of new drugs&#10;E)To detect clusters

Accepted Answer

Good surveillance data are essential to detect clusters of
outbreaks of disease, to monitor the effects of interventions including new medications
and to inform health policy.Surveillance data will not normally contribute to studies of
the relationships between risk factors and disease (A) although they may be used
descriptively to suggest hypotheses regarding potential causes, or to calculate
healthcare costs (C) although they may inform these calculations for notifiable diseases.

Deck 12: Surveillance: Collecting Health-Related Data for Epidemiological