The local physician promptly called the New Mexico state health department, setting into motion a chain of actions leading to the discovery of a large nationwide epidemic and the recall of L-tryptophan. The second means of identifying outbreaks is the routine analysis of public health surveillance data. Through public health surveillance , data on health are systematically collected, analyzed, interpreted, and disseminated on an ongoing basis. This information, which is based on reports sent in by doctors, laboratories, and other sources, allows investigators to track patterns of disease in a community and to determine how to control and prevent it. When, during routine analysis, the data show an increase over the normal background level of reported cases of a particular disease, an outbreak may be indicated.
Health departments investigate suspected outbreaks for a variety of reasons.
These include the need to institute control and prevention measures, the severity of the problem and its risk to others, the opportunity for research and training, program considerations, and public relations, political concerns, and legal obligations. Control and prevention. A primary reason for a public health investigation is to control the outbreak at hand and prevent future outbreaks. If cases are continuing to occur, your first priority will more than likely be controlling the outbreak, so you want will to assess its extent and the characteristics of the population at risk so you can design measures to prevent additional cases. On the other hand, if an outbreak appears almost over, you may want to focus on investigating further to identify its source and using that information to develop measures that will prevent future outbreaks.