Al-Surimi Khaled, Khalifa Mohammed, Bahkali Salwa, El-Metwally Ashraf, Househ Mowafa
Ministry of National Guard Health Affairs, College of Public Health and Health Informatics, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Department of Primary Care and Public Health, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2017;972:131-139. doi: 10.1007/5584_2016_132.
Health threats due to infectious diseases used to be a major public health concerns around the globe till mid of twentieth century when effective public health interventions helped in eradicating a number of infectious diseases around the world. Over the past 15 years, there has been a rise in the number of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases being reported such as the Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002, HINI in 2009, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012, Ebola in 2014, and Zika in 2016. These emerging viral infectious diseases have led to serious public health concerns leading to death and causing fear and anxiety among the public. More importantly, at the moment, the prevention and control of viral infectious diseases is difficult due to a lack of effective vaccines. Thus having real-time reporting tools are paramount to alert relevant public health surveillance systems and authorities about taking the right and necessary actions to control and minimize the potential harmful effects of viral infectious diseases. Social media and Internet-based data can play a major role in real-time reporting to empower active public health surveillance systems for controlling and fighting infectious diseases.
直到20世纪中叶，传染病造成的健康威胁一直是全球主要的公共卫生问题，当时有效的公共卫生干预措施帮助根除了世界上一些传染病。在过去15年里，报告的新出现和再次出现的传染病数量有所增加，如2002年的严重急性呼吸综合征（SARS）、2009年的甲型H1N1流感、2012年的中东呼吸综合征（MERS）、2014年的埃博拉病毒以及2016年的寨卡病毒。这些新出现的病毒性传染病引发了严重的公共卫生问题，导致死亡，并在公众中引起恐惧和焦虑。更重要的是，目前由于缺乏有效的疫苗，病毒性传染病的预防和控制很困难。因此，拥有实时报告工具对于提醒相关公共卫生监测系统和当局采取正确和必要的行动来控制和尽量减少病毒性传染病的潜在有害影响至关重要。社交媒体和基于互联网的数据在实时报告中可以发挥重要作用，以加强主动的公共卫生监测系统来控制和抗击传染病。
