Prof. Dr. Tahmina Shirin, PhD, Director, IEDCR

Disease surveillance is an essential public health function and an integral part of public health systems. Disease surveillance is defined as the “systematic ongoing collection, collation and analysis of data for public health purposes and the timely dissemination of public health information for assessment and public health response, as necessary”¹. International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005 obligates all WHO member states to develop an effective surveillance system to enhance early detection, reporting, notification, and verification of outbreaks and epidemics of emerging and re-emerging communicable diseases to support timely response by the national governments^1,2. This important IHR core capacity is measured by the country’s ability to conduct surveillance for priority epidemic-prone diseases according to international standards and is evaluated by the regular reporting and analysis of surveillance data³.

Bangladesh has several surveillance platforms; some are active and most of them are sentinel based or passive surveillance. Surveillance of emerging and re-emerging communicable and non-communicable diseases are being conducted by the responsible departments, and institutions. Most of these surveillances are indicator based, while there are some event-based surveillances including use of media monitoring and Early Warning, Alert and Response System (EWARS). The Bangladesh Communicable Disease (Prevention, Control and Eradication) Act 2018 identified several endemic communicable diseases, necessary measures were advised for prevention and control of those diseases including any emerging or re-emerging diseases declared by the Government following the WHO IHR 2005 guidelines⁴. To comply with the act, disease surveillance is regarded as an important public health function in Bangladesh. The first Joint External Evaluation for IHR 2005 core capacities in Bangladesh, conducted in 2016, acknowledged that the country had attained reasonable capacities for detection of events of significance for both human and animal health as well as for other health security threats of concern. It has been possible through establishing and enhancing an indicator-based national disease surveillance system with an automated and real-time data entry and data analysis capability⁵.

I congratulate the NBPH team to bring together many of the surveillance activities carried out by various departments of IEDCR. This will help those interested to look at a glance on how they were initiated as well as their present status. It also promises quarterly updates so that current position of the diseases is known. We will strive to make it more exhaustive so that surveillance carried out by institutions and departments outside IEDCR are also included in future issues.