Abstract Introduction/ Background
This is the first comprehensive review of Pakistan's only national outbreak surveillance system, the Event Based Surveillance system of the Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program just as the country prepares to implement an Infectious Diseases Surveillance and Response (IDSR) Programme in order to comply with International Health Regulations (2005Methods: We conducted a descriptive analysis of the line-list of events captured by EBS from January 2017 to December 2018 inclusive looking at type of event, source of information, response time and response lead.
Results
Twenty-one records were identified with the median delay between event onset and reporting date of 24-48 hours (but from 3-10 days in rural areas). Vaccine Preventable Diseases generate weekly alerts (80%) by district health departments but diseases like Acute Watery Diarrhea often alerted by local clinicians or media. The most commonly reported outbreaks were chickengunya, MDR Typhoid, CCHF, Diphtheria, Dengue, Varicella, Measles, Leishmaniasis, chickenpox, Influenza, Diarrhea, ARI and Naegleria and are geographically spread and have varying outcomes due to this delay.
Conclusion
The FELTP EBS is an effective, low-cost, locally appropriate, and sustainable outbreak detection system and could be used in other resource-poor settings but is not a comprehensive systematic national surveillance system which needs developing in a large populous country like Pakistan.Key Words: surveillance, International health regulations, Pakistan, timeliness External funding details NA