Epidemiological Concepts Regarding Disease Monitoring and Surveillance

Abstract

Definitions of epidemiological concepts regarding disease monitoring and surveillance can be found in textbooks on veterinary epidemiology. This paper gives a review of how the concepts: monitoring, surveillance, and disease control strategies are defined. Monitoring and surveillance systems (MO&SS) involve measurements of disease occurrence, and the design of the monitoring determines which types of disease occurrence measures can be applied. However, the knowledge of the performance of diagnostic tests (sensitivity and specificity) is essential to estimate the true occurrence of the disease. The terms, disease control programme (DCP) or disease eradication programme (DEP), are defined, and the steps of DCP/DEP are described to illustrate that they are a process rather than a static MO&SS.