Concordance and underreporting in the notification of foodborne disease outbreaks in Colombia

Abstract

Objective To determine the concordance and underreporting of foodborne illness outbreaks comparing the notification of outbreaks in individual and collective registries, reported to Colombia’s the national public health surveillance system in 2013. Methods A retrospective analysis based on the review and depuration of the foodborne illness databases of individual and collective records notified to the public health surveillance system; the concordance between reported outbreaks in each registry by territorial was determined and the sub-registry of notified outbreaks was established through the capture-recapture method, estimating the prevalence for each registry. Results 38.4% of outbreaks were reported in both registries, 11.3% were reported in outbreak registries and 50.3% were identified in individual case registries. Through the capture and recapture method, 1 680 outbreaks (IC 95%; 1 632-1 730) were estimated with 77.5% detected via individual case registry and 43.3% from the outbreak registry, resulting in underreporting of 12.8% of foodborne disease outbreaks. Discussion Low concordance between the registries was found which suggested high underreporting of outbreaks to the national surveillance system, this showcases the difficulty of outbreak detection in real-time and impacts timely mitigation and control measures.