Abstract
The Norwegian Surveillance System for Communicable Diseases (MSIS) includes variables related to travel for clinicians to fill when notifying travel-associated infections. We measured the completeness and validated the travel-history information for salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, giardiasis and shigellosis reported in 2009-2010. Of all 8,978 selected infections in MSIS, 8,122 (91%) were reported with place of infection of which 5,236 (65%) were notified as acquired abroad, including 5,017 with symptoms. Of these, 2,972 (59%) notifications had information on both date of arrival in Norway and date of symptom onset, so time between travel and illness onset could be assessed. Taking in account the incubation period, of the 1,435 infections reported as travel-associated and for which symptom onset occurred after return to Norway, 1,404 (98%) would have indeed been acquired abroad. We found a high level of completeness for the variable 'place of infection'. Our evaluation suggests that the validity of this information is high. However, incomplete data in the variables 'return date to Norway' and 'date of symptoms onset', only allowed assessment of the biological plausibility of being infected abroad for 59% of the cases. We encourage clinicians to report more complete travel information. High quality information on travel-associated gastrointestinal infections is crucial for understanding trends in domestic and imported cases and evaluating implemented control measures.
Highlights
Increased harmonisation in preventing foodborne infections at the European level and an increase in international travel in recent years has led to the need for better knowledge on the epidemiology of travelassociated infections in Europe
The results of the evaluation of the travel information reported in MSIS indicate a high level of completeness with regards to the variable ‘place of infection’
90% of gastrointestinal infections notified to MSIS were reported with known origin
Summary
Increased harmonisation in preventing foodborne infections at the European level and an increase in international travel in recent years has led to the need for better knowledge on the epidemiology of travelassociated infections in Europe. The Norwegian Surveillance System for Communicable Diseases (MSIS) includes several variables on travel history that should be filled in by clinicians when reporting notifiable diseases. This information is notified to the European Surveillance System (TESSy), and is presented in yearly surveillance reports [4].
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