Page 214 - Timeliness of Infectious Disease Notification & Response Systems - Corien Swaan

212 Chapter 9
- In absence of an outbreak control timeframe for these non-person-to-per- son transmissible diseases, we recommend incubation periods as disease specific timeframes instead.
- As notification and reporting delays have minimized, MHS and RIVM need to focus on insight in patient, doctor and laboratory delay and interventions to reduce these delays.
- Incorporate doctor’s consultation (TC) and initiating laboratory testing (TL) dates in each notified patient.
- For infectious diseases where total local identification time (D1X) are be- yond reach of the outbreak control timeframe, or 2 incubation periods, emphasis should be on primary prevention through health education, vac- cination and food safety for example.
Timely response
- When deciding on control measures, the delay in implementation and ef- fect on effectiveness should be taken into account.
- Analyses outcomes of contact tracing among flight passengers is necessary to justify the effort.
- Preparedness for emerging infections needs a multidisciplinary approach overarching both the public health and curative sector.
- Centralization of ambulance service and reduction of designated academic hospitals is necessary in the Netherlands, to reduce costs for enhanced pre- paredness for VHF or other highly infectious diseases.
- Quantitative performance indicators for evaluation of timeliness of re- sponse processes should be incorporated in the WHO AAR methodology. These indicators are disease specific and should be chosen per event, pref- erably in consultation with the involved professionals.