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The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health today (April 3) launched a surveillance system involving the Accident and Emergency Departments (A&Es) in public hospitals under the Hospital Authority to further enhance the monitoring of communicable disease activities in the community.
Under the newly launched Accident and Emergency Departments Communicable Diseases Syndromic Surveillance System, surveillance data collected from the A&Es of the public hospitals will be compiled into a weekly report covering the following syndrome groups:
1. Influenza-like illness syndrome group;
2. Hand, foot and mouth disease syndrome group;
3. Acute gastroenteritis syndrome group; and
4. Acute conjunctivitis syndrome group.
"The new system serves as an important enhancement of the current communicable diseases surveillance system as well as a timely health alert to the public. We give credit to the staff of the Hospital Authority for their efforts in collecting and organising the data," a CHP spokesman said.
Starting from today, the CHP will upload the weekly report, which summarises the findings of the previous week with interpretive notes, to the CHP website (www.chp.gov.hk) every Tuesday afternoon under the "Sentinel Surveillance" section.
Ends/Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Issued at HKT 15:10
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