I’ll ping you some Confluence pages 📃

Less formally, those who know me will know how excited I am to begin working internationally and on Global Health, applying the work I’ve been doing at PHE/UKHSA for the past almost six years!

More updates to follow

For more on @ukhsa.bsky.social’s IHR-SP, see this blog governmentscienceandengineering.blog.gov.uk/2022/03/17/u.... And for more about how this work fits into broader government Overseas Development Aid spend, see devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk/programme/GB...

In this role I’ll be working for my mentor, hero, and friend, @paulcleary.net on supporting the Pakistani Federal National Institute of Health and provincial departments of health on improving disease surveillance, particularly on the digital and data components that will underpin this.

For more on advice on staying safe from infectious diseases whilst travelling see NaTHNaC's travelhealthpro.org.uk/index.php

The report goes on to look at Hepatitis A, Measles, and other infections, including pointing to specialist epidemiology and surveillance reports on solely travel-associated infections like Malaria and other vector-borne diseases (Dengue, Zika, and others).

Enteric fever (AKA Typhoid and Paratyphoid infections) cases follow a disimilar epidemiology to gastro-intestinal infections, where most cases are 21-30 and 65% are male.

82% of cases returned from India (46%), Pakistan (27%), and Bangladesh (9%).

In thir report, for gastro-intestinal infections, the most commonly reported country from which cases have returned from overseas travel are Turkey (16%), Spain (10%), India (8%), & Egypt (6%).

The report incorporates guidance for travellers going abroad on how to avoid gastro-intestinal infections

For gastro-intestinal infections (mostly Cryptosporidium and Giardia), the most cases were indentified in children under 10 years old, and 59% of cases were Women. From an interpretation perspective, this is very likely to be a reporting bias where case ascertainment of infections is higher.

Over the last three years, overseas travel-associated infections have risen from winter through to a late Summer and Autumn peak. These are mostly gastro-intestinal infections and enteric fevers.

6 - This is also worth viewing in the context of the recent changes to the legislation that underpins this process. The updates to the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations added more notifiable diseases and we're expecting to resume reporting of notification statistics for these soon. Fin.

5 - Whilst the above is driven by the epidemiology at the time, this demonstrates the value of the service for surveillance and improving the routine reporting pathway for notifiable diseases. With better data, we are better able to track and respond to changes in incidence of these diseases.