Analysis on the early warning of acute infectious disease in Yingkou, Liaoning, 2007-2008

ObjectiveTo evaluate the performance of the infectious epidemic surveillance system for early warning of emergent acute infectious diseases in Yingkou, Liaoning from 2007 to 2008. MethodsOnset date, diagnosis time, time of creation of report card and reporting unit associated with common acute infectious diseases in Yingkou were collected based on the data derived from disease surveillance information report management system, the medical consultation rate, information acquisition rate, epidemic report rate in medical institutions at village and town (community) level and high-risk groups statistically analyzed.. ResultsThe first-day medical consultation rate ranged from 3.85% to 24.57% for five commonly seen acute infectious diseases in Yingkou in 2007, suggesting a low timely-visiting rate. The same-day information acquisition rate was also low, ranging from 3.85% to 19.47%. Low epidemic report rate was also noticed in basic medical institutions, for reports coming from county-level units accounted for merely 0.74% (13/1768). Schools and kindergartens constituted the prevalent area where high-risk people concentrated. ConclusionThe current surveillance system was incompetent at providing early warning information on emergent acute infectious diseases on a timely manner. Therefore, it is necessary to deploy symptom-based surveillance in kindergartens and schools, particularly focusing on absent students, and improve the performance of epidemic reporting in county-level medical institutions in order to compensate for delayed information and omitted report of epidemic outbreak and visits, and enhance the efficacy of early warning of acute infectious disease in Yingkou.