From: A surveillance sector review applied to infectious diseases at a country level
Gap name | Description | Example (from the current NZ situation) |
---|---|---|
A. Leadership & resource gaps | ||
Surveillance leadership and organisational gap | Lack of sector leadership, coordination, mandate, and supportive organisational structures | No plan for prioritising the development of public health surveillance and limited coordination of existing systems |
Surveillance workforce gap | Lack of trained workforce in critical areas, such as epidemiology | Shortage of epidemiologists and data analysts to review and interpret findings from surveillance systems |
Surveillance resource gap | Lack of sector resources in critical areas, such as laboratory services and information technology | Limited information technology development resources for public health sector |
B. Design/structural gaps | ||
Surveillance system gap | No surveillance system is established for important disease events, upstream hazards, determinants or interventions | No surveillance of most common syndromes in primary care (eg, gastroenteritis) |
Surveillance scope gap | A surveillance system is established, but its type, range of events covered, and scope of information it is designed to collect does not meet its purpose | Surveillance of hepatitis B and C is largely restricted to acute illness rather than chronic infectious cases |
Surveillance coverage gap | A surveillance system is established, but does not cover all of the necessary populations or settings | Absenteeism surveillance and emergency department syndromic surveillance for influenza-like illness is, in each case, confined to only one region in NZ |
C. Operation/functional gaps | ||
Surveillance performance gap | An established system doesn't meet necessary requirements for key attributes, such as timeliness, sensitivity and validity | Reporting of hospital discharges and deaths from infectious diseases is complete but not timely, limiting the value of the information for disease control |
Surveillance integration gap | Surveillance systems exist but do not link information in a way that supports optimal prevention and control measures | Food and water borne disease surveillance is not routinely linked to drinking water distribution zones so limiting its capacity to detect water treatment failures |
Surveillance analysis and communication gap | Surveillance systems operate but do not analyse and disseminate information in a way that supports effective action | Some national data on hospital-acquired infections is collected for health sector monitoring purposes but is not provided to infectious disease practitioners or policy makers |