A guide to develop the methodology, tools and the summary report of the joint national and international review of influenza sentinel surveillance in WHO’s South-East Asia Region

Abstract

WHE-SEARO together with Member States are monitoring implementation of the global influenza strategy (‎2019-30)‎ in the region. In line with the major strategic objective in the Global Influenza Strategy (‎2019-30)‎ namely “Surveillance, monitoring and data utilization” , SEARO has started a series of joint national and international influenza surveillance reviews. They also include national influenza centre (‎NIC)‎ assessments and influenza data management capacity enhancement sessions jointly with MSs, Global Influenza Programme (‎GIP)‎ , and partners such as United States Centers of Disease Control(‎US CDC)‎ and WHO Collaboration Centres (‎CC)‎ for influenza.To assist these joint national and international influenza surveillance reviews, SEARO has developed a tool tiled” A guide to develop the methodology, tools and the summary report of the joint national and international review of influenza sentinel surveillance in WHO’s South-East Asia Region.” The purpose of this protocol is to provide a guide for reviewing an influenza sentinel surveillance system. It is accompanied by evaluation forms to assist in the systematic and standardized review of individual sentinel surveillance sites and the surveillance system as a whole, and a report template to encourage standardized reporting of results. It should also help in identifying areas for improvement and designing recommendations to optimize the existing surveillance system. As the protocol, tool and report are universal, they should be adapted to represent the surveillance system capacity and its specific objectives in a country. The methodology, tools and the reporting template need to be updated to suit the specific country setting when undertaking the country influenza sentinel surveillance reviews. It is recommended that the influenza sentinel surveillance system be reviewed systemically to understand how the national system works, beginning at the functioning of individual sentinel sites and encapsulating all aspects of laboratory-assisted influenza sentinel surveillance