School-based Surveillance System(2017)

School-based Surveillance System(2017)

School children, who are in close contact with each other and pass infections around, are more susceptible to the communicable diseases. This is one of the main ways microorganisms circulate in campuses and communities, causing outbreaks of infectious diseases. To monitor the trends of communicable diseases in a multifaceted way, Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC) launched a pilot program for elementary schools to monitor and report symptoms and infectious diseases in February 2001. As of 2017, a total of 688 elementary schools enrolling students from kindergarten to 6th gradevoluntarilyparticipated in the system.The school-based surveillance system is a simple, flexible, specific and sensitivecommunicable disease reporting system that can effectively reflect epidemic trends, detect possible outbreaks and facilitate timely adoption of control measures, in order to contain the spread of communicable diseases in elementary schools.In addition, these data are used to analyze and estimate the scope and magnitude of diseasesat the school and regional levels, which can aid the early detection of disease clusters in communities. As a result, the school-based surveillance system serves the dual purposes of safeguarding the health of school children and achieving control of communicable diseases.