Control and Prevention of Viral Gastroenteritis

Diarrheal illness remains 1 of the top 5 causes of death in low-income and middle-income countries, especially for children <5 years of age. Introduction of universal childhood vaccination against rotaviruses has greatly reduced the incidence and severity of illness in upper-income and lower-income settings. For adults, norovirus is the leading cause of sporadic cases and outbreaks of diarrheal illness and is responsible for nearly 21 million episodes annually in the United States, of which 5.5 million are foodborne. Public health efforts to control and prevent norovirus illness have focused on rapid outbreak detection and source identification and control of transmission in institutional settings.