Laboratory Surveillance System(2011)

Laboratory Surveillance System(2011)

The island-wide outbreak of enterovirus epidemic in Taiwan in 1998 exposed the inadequacy of our virology laboratories in both quality and quantity. Thus the Department of Health (DOH) has been establishing contracted virology laboratories across Taiwan since March 1999. Aside from providing subsidies to the contracted laboratories, the DOH endeavors to improve Taiwan’s capacity for virus testing and cultivate professionals in the field. Currently, contracted laboratories are playing an important role in the testing of enterovirus and influenza viruses throughout the country. The proactive detection system formed by the contracted laboratories and their specimen collecting sites provide good and timely laboratory diagnosis services. This system is an implementation of a tiered system for viral testing at the central and local levels which could improve the timeliness and rates of disease detection. The laboratory surveillance targets mainly the prevalent types of enterovirus and influenza viruses in different years, their antigenicity and drug resistance that will enable Taiwan CDC to understand, for example, whether the prevalent influenza virus strains match vaccine strains for the year and the activities of important virus strains in different seasons. Such information provides useful references in the formulation of epidemic prevention policies, and moreover, contributes to the construction of a valuable native viral genome database and a biomaterial database in Taiwan.