Surveillance of imported hospital requiring malaria in Portugal: can it be improved?

Eur J Public Health. 2016 Jun;26(3):403-6. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckw052. Epub 2016 Apr 11.

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.

MeSH terms

  • Databases, Factual / statistics & numerical data
  • Diagnosis-Related Groups / statistics & numerical data*
  • Disease Notification / methods*
  • Disease Notification / statistics & numerical data
  • Hospitals*
  • Humans
  • Malaria / diagnosis
  • Malaria / epidemiology*
  • National Health Programs
  • Population Surveillance
  • Portugal / epidemiology
  • Quality Improvement*
  • Retrospective Studies