A disease outbreak is a group of cases affecting the health of people in one place or time that is significantly larger than would be expected by chance. Outbreaks are often caused by infectious agents, such as measles or cholera. Other outbreaks are environmental, such as foodborne diseases or pollution. Outbreaks may affect a single community or several communities, and can grow into an epidemic. When an epidemic occurs in a large number of countries, it is called a pandemic.
Detecting and characterizing outbreaks requires enormous amounts of resources, skill, and knowledge. Many outbreaks are detected too late, with resulting misery and death. Early detection and characterization of an outbreak can mitigate the dire consequences. Outbreaks can be caused by infections that are endemic to the human population, such as measles or influenza, or they can be zoonotic, such as cholera or Ebola.
Disease Outbreak News (DON) is a global public health intelligence system that shares early warning signals about potential outbreaks that are not yet reported to government authorities by other means. It uses open-source information and aims to complement formal surveillance systems, particularly in lower- and upper-middle-income economies where formal systems are not well linked.
In this month’s DON, we highlight the CHIKV disease outbreak in Bolivia, where 99% of notified cases are located in the department of Santa Cruz. We also discuss the increased number of syndromic outbreaks seen over the study period, most notably among gastrointestinal syndromes.
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