[Study on the occupational distribution of discoverers and reporters of public health emergency events reported through Internet-based surveillance system].
OBJECTIVE
To describe the occupational distribution of staff who worked on detection and reporting on public health emergency events, and to explore the effective strategies for identification and reporting on emergency events.


METHODS
We conducted a retrospective survey on 3275 emergent events reported through Public Health Emergency Events Surveillance System from 2005 to the first half of 2006. Data were collected by uniform self-administrated questionnaires by county Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including information on events detection and reporting, etc.


RESULTS
Among event discoverers, 56.40% (1847/3275) were healthcare staff, 20.58% (674/3275) were teachers, and 15.15% (496/3275) were staff from the disease control systems. Among those event reporters, 56.82% (1861/3275) were healthcare staff, 21.77% (713/3275) from disease control system and 10.75% (352/ 3275) were teachers.


CONCLUSIONS
Healthcare staff and teachers played the most important role in detection and reporting on events. It would be favorable to improve the ability of events detection and reporting if we could enhance the training program to the relative staff in medical facilities and school settings especially at the grass root level.
Feng
Zi-jian
ZJ
Office for Disease Control and Emergency Response, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing 100050, China.
Li
Ke-li
KL
Jin
Lian-mei
LM
Ni
Da-xin
DX
Xu
Zhen
Z
Wang
Ying
Y
D002681:China; D018563:Disease Notification / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D011159:Population Surveillance; D011634:Public Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*