Influenza surveillance department, national agency for public health, republic of moldova - during the last years, the U.S. Centers of disease control and prevention (CDC) has worked with the ministry…

Influenza surveillance department, national agency for public health, republic of moldova - during the last years, the U.S. Centers of disease control and prevention (CDC) has worked with the ministry of health, labor and social protection (mhlsp) and national counterparts from the republic of moldova to build capacities for pandemic preparedness, communication, surveillance, monitoring, early response, and infection control of influenza. Through this project, national agency for public health (naph) will: strengthen the laboratory-based sentinel-site surveillance; strengthen the hospital-based surveillance sentinel-sites; collect and submit electronically weekly influenza-surveillance information to who through tessy network; submit weekly 2 reports (1 ? Sentinel report, 1 ? National report) to the local and national authorities in order to evaluate the trends of diseases and implement public health measure; send samples for confirmation and quality control assurance of laboratory testing to who collaborative center for influenza in london, UK annually. The national viral laboratory (NVL) has internal quality control procedures and participates in external quality control programs in who CC london, who CC hong kong and who CC atlanta. The NVL fulfilled the terms of reference of a national influenza center (NIC) and was designated by who as a NIC in 2013. Thus, the targeted external funding from the CDC cooperative agreement helped to improve the influenza surveillance system by strengthening the existing the hospital-based surveillance and establishing laboratory?based surveillance. This allowed to ensure adequate monitoring and to obtain high quality data. However, IT is critical that these new capacities be sustained and strengthened over time. Objectives and technical approach project aims: strengthening the capacities for rapid detection and response to potential pandemic influenza as well as for monitoring the occurrence and assessing the impact of seasonal influenza in the country through enhancing the surveillance system and CO ntrol and improving pandemic preparedness in the republic of moldova. Main objectives of the project: 1. Strengthening the influenza surveillance, control system and monitoring of influenza viruses circulation in the republic of moldova; 2. To develop the capacity for detecting non-influenza viral and bacterial respiratory and vaccine-preventable pathogenthe specific objectives: 1.work with case definitions with family doctors and infectionists for ILI, ARI, sari and other respiratory infections.2.permanent monitoring of national influenza surveillance and control system regarding epidemiological and virological data collection, analysis, reporting, information sharing and implementation public health measures; 3.analyze and publish data from the national influenza surveillance system in order to predict the transmission based on previous patterns of spread, virus circulation and seasonality and to take the preparedness measures; 4.strengthen and maintain virological sentinel surveillance for sari, ARI and ILI and other respiratory infections in republic of moldova; 5.strengthen and maintain capacities for the detection of influenza and non-influenza viruses at the national viral laboratory; 6.share samples with influenza viruses with who global influenza surveillance and response system (gisrs) via the who collaboration center;7.strengthen and maintain national-routine and sentinel ILI, ARI, sari and other respiratory infections reporting as part 8.improve and maintain an information management system for influenza surveillance data; 9.maintain the capacity of epidemiologist in routine influenza surveillance, analysis and outbreak response by organizing annually trainings; 10.improve awareness of pandemic influenza preparedness and response capacities.