The description and first results of the French Communicable diseases Network are reported. The network, initiated in November 1984, currently includes the National Department of Health, the local health offices and various clinical, biological, and epidemiological partners. Surveillance of influenza, viral hepatitis, acute urethritis, measles, and mumps is based upon reports from sentinel general practitioners throughout France who are equipped with terminals and can communicate their data on a 24-hour basis. The network distributes electronic bulletins summarizing the surveillance data, the regional statistics concerning other diseases, and epidemiological and administrative news. Electronic mail is used for data validation and enhances communication between the parties of the network. (Am J Public Health 1986; 76:1289-1292 Introduction Surveillance has been defined as a "continued watchfulness over the distribution and trends of incidence through the systematic collection, consolidation and evaluation of morbidity and mortality reports and other relevant data."' Surveillance allows health administrators to optimally allocate health resources2; in communicable diseases, effective surveillance is necessary to prevent the spread of diseases.3In most countries, including France, a notifiable disease reporting system is the basis for surveillance. It is recognized that the quality of reporting is generally high for severe and/or rare diseases but low for diseases of higher frequency and lesser severity. The sources of information for the surveillance of communicable diseases as well as the preventive measures involve a large number of individuals and institutions: physicians in hospitals or in private practice, clinical laboratories, and both medical and nonmedical sources. In the case of the more common illnesses such as influenza, viral hepatitis, or (in France) measles, general practitioners (GPs) are the most likely physicians to uncover the cases, yet their links with public health offices or with biological laboratories aie weak. This imposes a major limitation on the effective-
The Rvachev-Baroyan-Longini model is a space-time predictive model of the spread of influenza epidemics. It has been applied to 128 cities of the USSR, and more recently, to forecasting the spread of the pandemic of 1968-1969 throughout 52 large cities. It is a deterministic, mass-action, space and time continuous model. The model has been applied to the simulation of the influenza epidemic of 1984-1985 in the 22 French Metropolitan districts and results are presented. Estimates of the parameters of the model were made using the French Communicable Diseases Network data. These parameters are the contact rate, a, (estimate = 0.55) which is the number of people with whom an infectious individual will make contact daily sufficient to pass infection and the infectious period, 1/b, estimated as 2.49 days. The mean annual railroad passenger traffic from district i to district j varies from 0 to 1,991,000 persons depending on the districts. The computer spread of the epidemic is presented on weekly maps. Results are also presented on district charts, giving the size of district epidemics and the time of peak of the epidemic. The precision of the computer fittings was judged satisfactory by the calculated size of peak differing from the real one by less than 100 per cent, in 17 out of 18 districts, and by the calculated time of peak differing from the observed by less than two weeks in 14 out of 18 districts. Although precision could be improved with more detailed information about passenger traffic, the French use of the model has been satisfactory.
The aim of this study is to describe the attitudes and practices of doctors and families regarding the use of the individual child health journal, especially by exploring the contradictions between the validity and confidentiality of its content, in particular with respect to HIV infection. In order to accomplish this, both doctors (N = 380) and families (N = 242) were questioned, most of them living and working in Seine-Saint-Denis, the metropolitan district with the third highest prevalence rate of HIV. The findings indicate that: most families are not always prepared to make sure that the confidential use of the child's health journal is maintained, and even less so those affected by HIV; doctors refrain from recording certain psychological and even medical data in the child health journal for fear of the information's misuse within the social sphere; doctors as well as families expressed their preoccupations concerning the confidentiality of the child health journal, essentially with respect to its content and how it is used in various contexts. A number of possibilities are proposed by the study's participants: establish a vaccination record separate from the child health journal, educate parents on how to maintain its confidential use and train the health workers to this end.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.