Review of Australia’s Health Sector Response to Pandemic (H1N1) 2009: Lessons Identified

Chapter 3: Surveillance

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Key Findings

• The Australian Government and state and territory governments worked well together to ensure that a national surveillance picture was available to inform decision makers and to keep the public informed.
• High priority should be placed on early identification and documentation of the true clinical picture to inform an appropriate health response.
• The clinical sector has a vital role in providing early warning of severity.
• The information needed to inform public health policy is not necessarily the information needed to inform the public about the disease.
• Collection and reporting of data is resource intensive and consideration needs to be given to ceasing some elements once they are no longer needed to inform decision making.
• Continued development of routine seasonal influenza surveillance would enable easy escalation during a pandemic.

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This information is current for 17 May, 2012
This information was issued on October, 2011