Abstract
IntroductionThe Notifiable disease surveillance system (NDSS) was established in Zimbabwe through the Public Health Act. Between January and August 2011, 14 dog bites were treated at Kadoma Hospital. Eighty-six doses of anti-rabies vaccine were dispensed. One suspected rabies case was reported, without epidemiological investigations. The discrepancy may imply under reporting of Notifiable Diseases. The study was conducted to evaluate the NDSS in Sanyati district.MethodsA descriptive cross sectional study was conducted. Healthcare workers in selected health facilities in urban, rural, and private and public sector were interviewed using questionnaires. Checklists were used to assess resource availability and guide records review of notification forms. Epi InfoTM was used to generate frequencies, proportions and Chi Square tests at 5% level.ResultsWe recruited 69 participants, from 16 facilities. Twenty six percent recalled at least 9 Notifiable diseases, 72% correctly mentioned the T1 form for notification, 39% correctly mentioned the forms completed in triplicate and 20% knew it was a legal requirement to notify. Ninety six percent of respondents indicated willingness to participate, whilst 41% had ever received feedback. Three out of 16 health facilities had T1 forms.ConclusionNDSS is useful, acceptable, simple, and sensitive. NDSS is threatened by lack of T1 forms, poor feedback and knowledge of health workers on NDSS. T1 forms and guidelines for completing the forms were distributed to all health facilities, public and private sector. On the job training of health workers through tutorials, supervision and feedback was conducted.
Highlights
Public health surveillance is the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data about a healthrelated event for use in public health action to reduce morbidity and mortality and to improve health [1]
According to the revised Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines on evaluation of surveillance systems, the measurement of the performance of public health surveillance systems for outbreak detection is needed to establish the relative value of different approaches and to provide information needed to improve their efficacy for detection of outbreaks at the earliest stages
Fifty five (80%) of the respondents were from the private sector, whilst 14 (20%) were from private sector
Summary
Public health surveillance is the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data about a healthrelated event for use in public health action to reduce morbidity and mortality and to improve health [1]. The T1 form is used for notification of infectious diseases as described by the Public Health Act chapter 15:09, section 17 [3] It is a case based system for prompt reporting of Notifiable diseases. Any health worker who comes in contact with a suspected or confirmed case of a Notifiable disease should immediately notify the District Medical Officer by telephone, radio or any other fast method available, within 24 hours of diagnosis. This is followed with a T1 form completed in triplicate [4]. If more than 5 cases of Notifiable cases of a disease occur in a specified time, a line list is maintained, which includes the first five cases [5]
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