Little Evidence on Usefulness of Bioterrorism Surveillance Systems

Main Category: Bio-terrorism / Terrorism
Article Date: 01 Jun 2004 - 4:00 PDT

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Although surveillance systems to detect illnesses and syndromes related to bioterrorism have proliferated, researchers found little information about how good they would be at detecting bioterrorism and emerging infections (Review, p. 910). Researchers identified 115 systems that collect various surveillance reports.

Only three had been evaluated for accuracy. Only two disease surveillance systems and no environmental monitoring system had been evaluated in studies published in peer-reviewed journals.

"Given the striking lack of information on the timeliness, sensitivity and specificity, and ability of systems to facilitate decision making, clinicians and public health officials deploying these systems do so with little scientific evidence to guide them," the authors say.

SUPPLEMENT ON DIABETES

Six papers in this Annals issue explore diabetes control and prevention, evolving disease burden, environmental issues in diabetes self-management education, application of economic analysis to diabetes and diabetes care and moving diabetes care from science to practice (Supplement, pp. 943-984). The ideas were presented at the CDC's Diabetes and Public Health 25th Anniversary Symposium in September 2003.

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Contact: Penny Fuller
pfuller@acponline.org
215-351-2656
American College of Physicians

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