Understanding Surveillance Systems in Infection Control

This assignment analyzes the importance of surveillance systems in epidemiology, focusing on their role in estimating population health status and guiding intervention needs. It distinguishes between active and passive surveillance systems, explaining why passive surveillance is often preferred despite challenges like poor disease understanding and disproportionate public alarm. The post utilizes examples such as Canada's Transfusion Transmitted Injuries Surveillance System (TTISS) to illustrate the effectiveness of passive surveillance in tracking adverse reactions.

Running Head: INFECTION
Infection
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1INFECTION
It can be agreed that surveillance is an important epidemiological tool as it helps to
estimate the health status of the population. It is the measure of the need for intervention and is
well explained in the post. The given post very precisely highlights the significance of the
surveillance systems. It gives insights into the classification of the surveillance system that is the
active and the passive system. The post explains why more attention is given to the passive
surveillance system than the active one. This post is well supported with the relevant references.
It would have been better if it as also supported with some examples.
There are many examples that can justify the post. For instance “The Transfusion
Transmitted Injuries Surveillance System (TTISS)” established by Canada's public health agency
was effective in tracking the transfusion services in the Canadian hospitals. With the help of this
tool, a total of 3,957 adverse reactions were reported between 2006-2012. The majority of the
reactions due to transfusions led to minor injuries or no sequelae. To monitor the adverse
transfusion reactions, there is a need for further strengthening the TTIS (Mounchili et al. 2014).
Passive surveillance is mostly preferred because there are challenges with active
surveillances system. Environmental public health surveillances are complicated due to some
challenges. Poor understanding of the disease hampers the ability to link the particular
environmental causes to the adverse outcomes. The challenge is also due to multiple potential
causes of disease and inadequate measure of exposure. Public policies are influenced
disproportionately to scientific information. It is because the public alarm to the hazard of
concern is out of proportion. Further, during the environmental exposure surveillance, the
biological markers may become the critical elements (Gilbert and Cliffe 2016).

2INFECTION
References
Gilbert, R. and Cliffe, S.J., 2016. Public Health Surveillance. In Public Health Intelligence (pp.
91-110). Springer International Publishing.
Mounchili, A., Leduc, S., Archibald, C., Miller, J. and Hyson, C., 2014. A summary of the
Transfusion Transmitted Injuries Surveillance System: 2006-2012. Canada Communicable
Disease Report, 40(18), p.379.