Monitoring Acute Diarrhea via an Electronic Surveillance System in the Peruvian Navy

Abstract

Vigila is a national electronic surveillance system implemented by the Peruvian Navy in order to monitor infectious diseases. Vigila includes 169 reporting establishments, which treat active military, retired military, dependents, and civilian employees. The goal of this study was to establish baselines of acute diarrheal disease in the Peruvian Navy and detect outbreaks of acute diarrheal disease from 2009-2013. There were 39,764 cases of acute diarrheal disease reported, and 25 outbreaks were detected using Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) control charts. These analyses demonstrate the utility of syndromic surveillance in a resource-limited setting.