Analysis of Early Results from the Emergency Department Syndromic Surveillance System for Bioterrorism

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: This study reviewed the development of and analyzed the early results from syndromic surveillance based on emergency departments, which was developed to detect bioterrorism attacks, especially during the 2002 FIFA Korea-Japan World Cup games. METHOD: Data from homepages and server computers were analyzed from May 13 2002, to August 5 2002. The data were gathered everyday from 121 emergency departments in Korea via the internet by using PC or PDA. Some data gathered via telephone or FAX were also digitalized. RESULTS: The daily report rate was 82.5% on average. Most of the cases were acute respiratory syndrome (63.4%) and acute sporadic diarrheal syndrome (34.8%). No bioterrorism was confirmed during this period. The peak times and distributions of sporadic and cluster cases of acute diarrheal syndrome are not equivalent. In the case of level 2 reports, there was an average of 12 cases per one institute and 32.8 cases per institute of level 1 and 2 reports totally. CONCLUSIONS: The emergency department syndromic surveillance system for bioterrorism is the first everyday reporting system based on the clinical basis in emergency depart-ments. It has been and is functioning without large problems, but exact knowledge of and more participation by reporting institutes are required. It is necessary to survey the results for a longer period and to correct the early problems if we want to know the ultimate usefulness of this system.