Abstract:
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.
