Infection Control in Nursery Schools and Schools Using a School Absenteeism Surveillance System

Abstract

Infection control in nursery schools and schools is important for community health and the health of children. In Japan, caregivers of children or students usually report the absence due to illness to their attending nurseries or schools, including symptoms and diagnosed diseases. The (Nursery) School Absenteeism Surveillance System, (N)SASSy, covers about 60% of schools and 40% of nurseries in Japan.In this paper, we evaluated the benefits of (N)SASSy as an infection control measure by a public health center. Mito Public Health Center (MPHC) covers 58 nurseries and 186 schools, as of May 2015, and called the nurseries and/or schools to confirm the situation, in case of aberration detected through (N)SASSy. The outcome was defined as the proportion of cluster avoidance by advice from MPHC. A cluster was identified, when the number of patients at the same facility with the same symptom or diagnosed disease was greater than ten during the prior seven days. During the study period (April 2015-March 2016), MPHC advised 85 times, and clusters were avoided 82 times (96.5%). The proportion of cluster avoidance was 100% for fever, enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli infection, respiratory syncytial virus infection, or streptococcal pharyngitis infection. The proportion of cluster avoidance for diarrhea, vomiting or gastroenteritis infection, mumps, hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD), and influenza was 78.8, 50.0, 20.0, and 6.7%, respectively. In conclusion, advice from a public health center given by phone based on information from (N)SASSy will be helpful for reducing the number of clusters of infectious diseases, except for HFMD and influenza.

Availability of Infection Prevention Measures and Occurrence of Infections in Childcare Centres in Sagamu Local Government Area, Ogun State, Nigeria

“…Without strategies to curb infections, children get sick in the first five years of life as their bodies build immunity to diseases. [15] This has been observed in Nigeria [9][10] and globally. Several studies have identified the factors responsible for the increase in infection rate among children cared for at CCs compared to those cared for at home.…”

“…Most of the time, the absenteeism is due to illnesses. [9] The availability of infection preventive measures in CCs may reduce the occurrence of infection in the centres. Appropriate hand hygiene by caregivers and children has been investigated, proven, and implemented in Germany to reduce the spread of illnesses and, subsequently, the number of absent days.…”

Early Detection and Monitoring of Gastrointestinal Infections Using Syndromic Surveillance: A Systematic Review

“…Just over half of the studies (52%, 15/29) were reported from the United States and United Kingdom [8,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. About 55% (16/29) [13,16,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] of the studies indicated that syndromic surveillance exhibited the potential to detect GI infections earlier than traditional surveillance, while a further 10% (3/29) of studies indicated that syndromic surveillance exhibits the potential to detect GI infections or symptoms at an early stage but with limitations [15,20,36]; a further 3% (1/29) highlighted that syndromic surveillance exhibits potential to detect GI infections or symptoms at an early stage only when combined with traditional surveillance system [18].…”

“…Of the included studies, 3/29 reported the use of multiple or combined syndromic surveillance systems [24,25,27]. The other systems reported in the included studies were National Health Service (NHS) Direct calls (a telehealth system) [13], GP surveillance [26,29,38], integrated medical records from inpatient, outpatient, laboratory, and pharmacy data [18,21,[23][24][25]27,28,35,39], electronic medical records [8,18,23,32], a nurse advice hotline [21], nursing home public health surveillance system [28], internet search queries [30], and nursery school absenteeism [31].…”

Retrospective Evaluation for ORCA Surveillance Comparison with Prescription Surveillance

“…Prescription Surveillance (PS), as operated in Japan by the Japan Medical Asso-Journal of Biosciences and Medicines ciation, Japan Pharmaceutical Association, School of Pharmacy, and EM Systems Co. Ltd., has been functioning as a nationwide real-time syndromic surveillance system [1]- [7] as along with (N) SASSy which has been serving 65% of Japan [6]- [12]. Since 2009, PS has been reporting the estimated number of influenza and chicken pox patients, in addition to the numbers of patients who are prescribed drugs of certain types, based on prescriptions at pharmacies.…”