The study of Post–large–scale disaster disease surveillance in Thailand

Abstract

Background: Since the outbreaks and epidemic-prone diseases occurred after large-scale Disaster, Thailand Department of Disease Control had set up the disease surveillance system for these events such as tsunami in 2004 and large-scale Flooding in 2011. During these two disaster periods, the Department of Disease Control established the post-tsunami active disease surveillance and surveillance for post-large-scale flooding for monitoring trends of outbreak-prone diseases for rapid disease control response. The objectives of this study were to study the post–tsunami active disease surveillance and post– large– scale disaster surveillance and to provide the recommendations for improvement the surveillance for disaster in the future.
Methods: The methods of this documentary research were 1) review literature about post–tsunami in 2004–2005 and post–large-scale flooding disease surveillance in 2011–2012, disease prevention and control, public health emergency management, public health emergency management in disease outbreak issue, the study of post– disaster (including tsunami and post–large–scale flooding) disease prevention and control and tsunami in Thailand documents 2) collect the data and analyze all gathering data using thematic analysis, according to various qualitative attributes of the surveillance system and 3) summarize and discuss the results in order to provide the recommendation of post–disaster disease prevention and control management.
Results: Simplicity, flexibility, usefulness, and acceptability, the attributes of the disease surveillance were good, but the stability was poor.
Recommendations: The Thai Department of Disease Control should 1) evaluate of cost-effectiveness and efficiency of the surveillance, 2) prepare the suitable post-disaster surveillance for every post-disaster event, 3) set up the post-disaster disease control preparedness plan in the public health emergency plan, and 4) collect data both soft and hard copies systematically, completely, and safely for analysis effectively in the future.