Infectious Disease Surveillance Among Deployed Military Personnel: Needs and Opportunities for Real‐Time Febrile Illness Surveillance

Abstract

Surveillance networks such as GeoSentinel and TropNetEurop conduct global infectious disease surveillance using travel and tropical medicine clinics, which contribute clinical information during or after travel.1 These networks have published data characterizing the spectrum of disease associated with travel to specific regions of the world and among specific groups of travelers, informing post‐travel patient evaluation and pre‐travel health advice. Military forces constitute an international traveler population that presents unique opportunities for global infectious disease surveillance. Health data collected during or after military deployment may become part of the patient's longitudinal medical record, enabling assessments of predeployment health status and vaccinations on deployment‐related risks. In some countries, there is near‐complete capture of military medical encounters as military personnel receive care almost exclusively in a military or national health system. This could reduce bias compared to surveillance systems dependent on referrals to specialty clinics, which could miss patients seen only in primary care clinics. Another advantage is that incidence rates can be calculated with more precision as often the size of the population (ie, the denominator) and duration of risk are known. In this issue of the Journal of Travel Medicine , de Laval and colleagues2 provide a global snapshot of dengue using epidemiological surveillance in deployed French Armed Forces personnel. As part of an established surveillance program, military physicians complete case report forms for patients with dengue symptoms and send them to … Corresponding Author: Peter J. Sebeny, MD, MPH, 136 Mill Road, North Hampton, NH 03862, USA. E‐mail: sebeny{at}comcast.net