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A sentinel surveillance system involving more than 40 child care centres has been launched to further improve the sensitivity of the detection of a communicable disease outbreak in the community.
The Centre for Health Protection said one of the aims of this new system is to detect early signs of increase in communicable diseases among children attending centres at the community-wide level and to issue a timely public health alert.
Under the new system, participating child care centres report weekly statistics on absenteeism, fever, diarrhoea and vomiting among children in these centres.
A pilot scheme was carried out in March, 2004, with 10 child care centres. The feedback was positive so the system has recently been extended to another 36 centres.
From today, surveillance data collected from these centres together with interpretive notes will be uploaded to the Centre's website and the Department of Health's website every Friday afternoon under the "Sentinel Surveillance" section.
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