Abstract
The epidemic of the Ebola virus infection in West Africa in 2014 has become a worldwide concern. Due to the nature of the disease, which has an extremely high mortality potential, this outbreak has received much attention from researchers and public health workers. An article entitled "Need of surveillance response systems to combat Ebola outbreaks and other emerging infectious diseases in African countries," published in the journal Infectious Diseases of Poverty in August 2014, concluded that a good surveillance system to monitor disease transmission dynamics is essential and needs to be implemented to combat the outbreak. Issues regarding the limitation of the passive surveillance system have been raised by Professor Viroj Wiwanitkit, who emphasizes the need for an active disease detection system such as mass screening in this letter to editor. The different function between passive and active surveillance system in combating the disease outbreak has been agreed upon by Ernest Tambo et al. There have also been discussions between Wiwanitkit and Tambo et al. on the following issues: (i) the extreme resource limitations in outbreak areas, (ii) new technology to improve the available systems. Further recommendations echoed in this letter to editor by Wiwanitkit, who outlined the research priorities on the development of appropriate combined disease monitoring systems and good policy to allocate available tools and technology in resource-limited settings for epidemic scenarios. The journal’s editor, Professor Xiao-Nong Zhou, has therefore collated all parts of these discussions between authors in this letter to editor paper, in order to further promote research on a combined active and passive system to combat the present extending Ebola outbreak.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/2049-9957-4-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The epidemic of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa in 2014 continues to present a global concern due to its extremely high mortality potential, and short- and long-term regional and international consequences
* Correspondence: wviroj@yahoo.com; tambo0711@gmail.com 1Surin Rajabhat University, Bangkok, Thailand 3Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Wits 21st Century Institute, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Full list of author information is available at the end of the article from researchers, humanitarian organizations, and international agencies, as well as from public health workers and communities [1,2]
Issues regarding the limitation of the passive surveillance system have been raised by Viroj Wiwanitkit in this letter to editor, who emphasizes the need for an active disease detection system such as massive population screening and other interventions
Summary
Background The epidemic of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa in 2014 continues to present a global concern due to its extremely high mortality potential, and short- and long-term regional and international consequences. * Correspondence: wviroj@yahoo.com; tambo0711@gmail.com 1Surin Rajabhat University, Bangkok, Thailand 3Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Wits 21st Century Institute, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Full list of author information is available at the end of the article from researchers, humanitarian organizations, and international agencies, as well as from public health workers and communities [1,2].
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