Influenza World Health Care Professionals

Effective surveillance of local influenza activity is essential to aid preparation for influenza outbreaks and assist diagnosis when outbreaks occur. Several organisations perform influenza surveillance, with most providing weekly surveillance reports during the influenza season.

Global

The World Health Organization (WHO) Global Influenza Surveillance Network comprises four WHO Collaborating Centres and 116 institutions in 87 countries (recognised by the WHO as WHO National Influenza Centres [NICs]). NICs collect local specimens and perform primary virus isolation and preliminary antigenic characterisation. The newly isolated influenza strains are shipped to WHO Collaborating Centres for high-level antigenic and genetic analysis – the result of which forms the basis for WHO annual recommendations on the composition of influenza vaccine for the Northern and Southern hemisphere.

The WHO Influenza Surveillance Network serves also as a global alert mechanism for the emergence of influenza viruses with potential to cause a pandemic.

FluNet is an electronic platform that allows users to analyse and compare standardised epidemiological and virological data on influenza contained within the database. It can be accessed from here.

Europe

The European Influenza Surveillance Scheme (EISS) collects and exchanges information on the activity of influenza from 26 European Union member states, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Ukraine.

Data is reported to the EISS by approximately 13,000 sentinel physicians covering a total population of about 484 million inhabitants. This information is published as a weekly surveillance report during the influenza seasons and it is used to help determine influenza vaccine content for following year, provides relevant information about influenza to health professionals and the general public, and contributes to European influenza pandemic preparedness activities.

The EISS Weekly Electronic Bulletin is available from www.eiss.org.

The UK is represented by four surveillance networks: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Surveillance of influenza is co-ordinated and collated by the Health Protection Agency Colindale Surveillance of Influenza Group, HPA Centre for Infections. During the influenza season, clinical and virological data are included in a weekly HPA  Influenza Report which can be accessed from http://www.hpa.org.uk/infections/topics_AZ/influenza/seasonal/uk_data_sources.htm.

United States

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collects similar information about the activity of influenza virus in the US. This information is published as a weekly report and can be accessed from here. 

From January 2007, the CDC has requested that all states report all cases of human infection with novel influenza A viruses. A rapid increase in the number of human infections with novel influenza A viruses may signal the beginning of an influenza pandemic. Monitoring for such infections will aid early implementation of public health responses.

Canada

The Science Section of the Immunization and Respiratory Infections Division, Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control (CIDPC), produces FluWatch reports, which summarise influenza surveillance activities in Canada.

These reports are published weekly during the influenza season (October–May) and biweekly at other times (June–September) and can be accessed from here. Influenza surveillance is a collaborative effort between provincial and territorial ministries of health, participating laboratories, The College of Family Physicians of Canada, sentinel practitioners, and CIDPC.