Infectious disease and mortality surveillance in Israel in peace and war.

The goals of infectious disease surveillance in war and in peace are the same: the detection of infectious diseases, outbreak identification and control, the assessment of vaccination programs, and the determination of the need for specific preventive measures. In the 1991 Gulf War, Israel's infectious disease surveillance system was utilized to follow the progress of a measles epidemic and to look for evidence of a concealed biological warfare attack. Stepped up mortality and morbidity surveillance, based on a prepared and smoothly functioning notification system, failed to uncover any suggestion that biological agents had been deployed.