Bangladesh is one of the world’s most population-dense nations and an outbreak of respiratory disease could have devastating consequences to its people.  This surveillance aims to enhance and strengthen existing event based surveillance activities across Bangladesh and to improve early detection and rapid reporting of emerging and re-emerging respiratory disease threats.

This surveillance started in 2017. All medicine, pediatrics and ICU doctors as well as medical technologists of tertiary and district hospitals of six divisions were trained to support this surveillance program. But the program did not work.

In November 2022, the respiratory event based surveillance program restarted. The operational guideline was updated and training design was changed. Respiratory medicine department was included in this program. Thirteen govt and private hospitals of Dhaka city as well as Rajshahi, Bogra and Rangpur medical colleges were included in this surveillance. Till now 15 samples were collected from different hospitals. No unknown pathogens were detected.