1Hyogo Prefectural Institute of Public Health and Consumer Sciences, Hyogo 652-0032; 2Infectious Disease Surveillance Center, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo 162-8640; 3Okafuji Pediatric Clinic, Himeji 671-1116; 5Center for Infectious Diseases, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe 650-0017, Japan; and 4Department of Microbiology, BGC Trust Medical College, Chandana...

In 1999, an infectious disease prevention law was enacted in Japan that affected the nationwide infectious surveillance system. A total of 19,304 laboratory-confirmed verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli cases were reported through 2004. The annual incidence was 2.74/100,000 population; its fluctuation over time and space was associated with climate, socioeconomic, and population factors.

Simon Hay and colleagues discuss the potential and challenges of producing continually updated infectious disease risk maps using diverse and large volume data sources such as social media.

This article reviews the practical aspects of the use of ARIMA (autoregressive, integrated, moving average) modelling of time series as applied to the surveillance of reportable infectious diseases, with special reference to the widely available SSS1 package, produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The main steps required by ARIMA modelling are the selection of the time seri...

Containment of potential pandemic threats such as SARS and avian ‡u depends on prompt reporting of outbreaks. This paper examines the incentives of source countries to identify and disclose outbreaks. The analysis yields a number of policy-relevent …ndings. Whereas sanctions by trading partners following the formal report of an outbreak discourages reporting, sanctions based on fears of an unde...

Yasuo Honma, Yuko Yoshii, Yumiko Watanabe, Nobuki Aoki, Takako Komiya, Masaaki Iwaki, Hiroyuki Arai, Yoshichika Arakawa, Motohide Takahashi*, and Hirokazu Kimura Shinrakuen Hospital, Niigata 950-2087; Department of Bacteriology II and Infectious Disease Surveillance Center, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo 208-0011; and Department of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Institute of Deve...

Infectious diseases are responsible for significant disease burden in the Pacific Islands. Environmental drivers of disease transmission and public health challenges vary between diseases, at times of emergence versus outbreaks, and also during the last stages of elimination where prevalence is low. In order to more effectively combat infectious diseases in the region, innovative approaches suc...

Introduction Epidemiological modeling for infectious disease is useful for disease management and routine implementation needs to be facilitated through better description of models in an operational context. A standardized model characterization process that allows selection or making manual comparisons of available models and their results is currently lacking. Los Alamos National Laboratory ...

In view of the galloping pace of globalization that is transforming the world into a global village, close international cooperation is essential in the detection , prevention, and control of communicable diseases.

An outbreak of infectious diarrhea with 70 laboratory-confirmed cases (58 with Giardia lamblia) and 107 probable cases occurred in U.K. tourists who stayed in a hotel in Greece. After a cluster of six cases in persons who had stayed at the hotel was reported, the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre began active case ascertainment. This outbreak illustrates the value of an approach to surve...