Surin Rajabhat University, Bangkok, Thailand ; Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Osogbo, Nigeria.
Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Wits 21st Century Institute, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa ; Department of Biochemistry, Center for Sustainable Malaria Control, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa.
Infect Dis Poverty. 2015 Jan 9;4(1):7. doi: 10.1186/2049-9957-4-7. eCollection 2015.
The epidemic of the Ebola virus infection in West Africa in 2014 has become a worldwide concern. Due to the nature of the disease, which has an extremely high mortality potential, this outbreak has received much attention from researchers and public health workers. An article entitled "Need of surveillance response systems to combat Ebola outbreaks and other emerging infectious diseases in African countries," published in the journal Infectious Diseases of Poverty in August 2014, concluded that a good surveillance system to monitor disease transmission dynamics is essential and needs to be implemented to combat the outbreak. Issues regarding the limitation of the passive surveillance system have been raised by Professor Viroj Wiwanitkit, who emphasizes the need for an active disease detection system such as mass screening in this letter to editor. The different function between passive and active surveillance system in combating the disease outbreak has been agreed upon by Ernest Tambo et al. There have also been discussions between Wiwanitkit and Tambo et al. on the following issues: (i) the extreme resource limitations in outbreak areas, (ii) new technology to improve the available systems. Further recommendations echoed in this letter to editor by Wiwanitkit, who outlined the research priorities on the development of appropriate combined disease monitoring systems and good policy to allocate available tools and technology in resource-limited settings for epidemic scenarios. The journal's editor, Professor Xiao-Nong Zhou, has therefore collated all parts of these discussions between authors in this letter to editor paper, in order to further promote research on a combined active and passive system to combat the present extending Ebola outbreak.
2014 年西非的埃博拉病毒感染疫情已成为全球关注的焦点。由于该疾病具有极高的致死率，因此这次疫情引起了研究人员和公共卫生工作者的高度关注。2014 年 8 月，《传染病与贫困杂志》发表了一篇题为《监测应对系统在非洲国家对抗埃博拉疫情和其他新发传染病中的必要性》的文章，得出的结论是，建立一个良好的监测系统来监测疾病传播动态是至关重要的，需要实施该系统来对抗疫情。Viroj Wiwanitkit 教授在这篇社论中提出了被动监测系统存在局限性的问题，他强调需要一种主动的疾病检测系统，如大规模筛查。被动和主动监测系统在对抗疾病爆发方面的不同功能得到了 Ernest Tambo 等人的认可。Wiwanitkit 还与 Tambo 等人讨论了以下问题：（i）疫情地区的极端资源限制，（ii）改善现有系统的新技术。Wiwanitkit 在这篇社论中进一步提出了建议，概述了在资源有限的情况下制定适当的综合疾病监测系统和良好政策的研究重点，以分配现有工具和技术，应对疫情。该杂志的编辑 Xiao-Nong Zhou 教授因此在这篇社论中整理了作者之间的所有讨论部分，以进一步推动针对目前正在蔓延的埃博拉疫情的主动和被动综合系统的研究。
