Schistosomiasis is a chronic infection caused by flukes belonging to the genus Schistosoma. At least 200 million people, in 74 countries, are infected with the disease and at least 600 million are at risk of infection [1]. Like the majority of the parasitic diseases, schistosomiasis is influenced by human behavior, mainly water use practices and indiscriminate urination and defecation, but also, failure to take advantage of available screening services.

Objective

Homeland Security Presidential Directive – 21 (HSPD-21) requires the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a national biosurveillance capability that provides early warning and situation awareness for urgent public health events.  Early concepts of biosurveillance focused primarily on syndromic surveillance methodologies; while recent descriptions call for a more comprehensive and integrated approach to determine a nationwide biosurveillance capability (1, 2).

Objective:

In the spring of 2005, the ISDH began using Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics  (ESSENCE) application to analyze emergency department (ED) chief complaint data for syndromic surveillance purposes.  While granting hospitals and local health departments access to their data through ESSENCE has been desirable since the start of the PHESS project, an aggressive timeline made it necessary to direct all resource capacity toward first establishing hospital ED data connections.  The Marion County Health Department (Indianapolis) was the only LHD i

Reporting allows for the collection of statistics that show how often disease occurs, which helps researchers identify disease trends and track disease outbreaks. U.S. Navy has a modified list of reportable medical events to accommodate for deployment limiting functions. Reports on all reportable events are submitted to the Naval Disease Reporting System (NDRS). Medical event surveillance is particularly important in the military populations where medical events can have mission-degrading implications and affect troop strength.

Objective