title: Surveillance of imported hospital requiring malaria in Portugal: can it be improved?
abstract: Although eradicated in Portugal, malaria keeps taking its toll on travellers and migrants from endemic countries. Completeness of hospital requiring malaria notification in Portugal 2000-11 was estimated, using two-source capture-recapture method. Data sources were: national surveillance database of notifiable diseases and the national database of the Diagnosis-Related Groups resulting from National Health Service (NHS) hospital episodes. The completeness of notification was 21,2% for all malaria cases and 26,5% for malaria deaths, indicating significant underreporting and urging for complementary data source in surveillance, for disease burden estimates and retrospective monitoring, namely hospital episodes statistics.
authors.affiliation: 1 Public Health Department, Nova Medical School, Faculdade Ciências Médicas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Nova Lisbon University), Portugal, Campo Mártires da Pátria, 130, Lisboa 1169-056, Portugal ana.fonseca@fcm.unl.pt.
authors.forename: Ana Glória
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Fonseca
authors.affiliation: 2 Public Health Department, Nova Medical School, Faculdade Ciências Médicas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Nova Lisbon University), Portugal, Campo Mártires da Pátria, 130, Lisboa 1169-056 and UIS-ESSLei-IPLeiria, Leiria, Portugal.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Simões Dias
authors.affiliation: 3 Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde (Faculty of Health Sciences), Universidade da Beira Interior (Beira Interior University), Portugal, Av. Infante D. Henrique, Covilhã 6200-506, Portugal.
authors.forename: João Luís
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Baptista
authors.affiliation: 4 Public Health Department, Nova Medical School, Faculdade Ciências Médicas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Nova Lisbon University), Portugal, Campo Mártires da Pátria, 130, Lisboa 1169-056, Portugal.
authors.forename: Jorge
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Torgal
mesh_terms: D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003953:Diagnosis-Related Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018563:Disease Notification / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D008288:Malaria / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D009313:National Health Programs; D011159:Population Surveillance; D011174:Portugal / Q000453:epidemiology; D058996:Quality Improvement; D012189:Retrospective Studies