Kinshasa, march 14th, 2023 (CPA).- The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) currently has six sentinel influenza surveillance sites in three provinces, namely Kinshasa (four sites), Kongo Central (one site) and Haut-Katanga (one site), the epidemiological surveillance direction informed CPA on Monday in an information note.
« The sentinel surveillance of influenza aims to detect new influenza strains able to cause a pandemic, to determine the epidemiology of influenza and other viral respiratory diseases, to determine the proportions of confirmed cases of influenza in patients hospitalised for Covid-19 and those suffering from influenza syndromes in outpatient clinics, » said the Direction of Epidemiological Surveillance, which is part of the General Direction for Disease Control of the Ministry in charge of Public Health.
These sentinel sites also allow for the collection of data that will be useful for establishing estimates of the burden of influenza in DRC.
Through this influenza sentinel surveillance project, the same source said, sentinel surveillance of severe respiratory infections (ARI) has been added since December 2022 in nine selected sites in Kinshasa in three health zones, namely Kingasani (three sites), Lingwala (three sites) and Selembao (three sites).
The objective of setting up these sites is to detect outbreaks of acute respiratory infections (ARI) in order to detect other types of respiratory viruses circulating in DRC (apart from influenza viruses).
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