Book Review

Infectious Disease Surveillance

N Engl J Med 2008; 358:1413-1414March 27, 2008

Article

Infectious Disease Surveillance
Edited by Nkuchia M. M'ikanatha, Ruth Lynfield, Chris A. Van Beneden, and Henriette de Valk. 538 pp., illustrated. Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2007. $169. ISBN: 978-1-4051-4266-3

More than 100 years ago in London, William Farr plotted the geographic distribution of cholera deaths and John Snow surveyed his neighbors. Surveillance of infectious diseases has been, and continues to be, the most widely applied element of public health surveillance. The editors of Infectious Disease Surveillance note in their dedication that it is the “first critical step in protecting communities from infectious diseases.” Yet, as the authors of the book's chapter on the Epidemic Intelligence Service point out, public health surveillance is “an area not often covered in academic training.” Therefore, a survey of the surveillance of infectious diseases is a welcome addition.

There is much published literature about the surveillance of infectious diseases, but there are few synoptic textbooks on the topic. Infectious Disease Surveillance is more a collection of papers on specific topics than a step-by-step guide to the discipline, but it serves the purpose nonetheless. It is a practical reference for public health practitioners and will make a useful textbook for courses in infectious diseases and public health surveillance. The book is written and edited by a group of international authors who have first-hand experience of frontline surveillance of communicable diseases, and the focus is on “actionable surveillance.”

The target audience for the book is practitioners of public health surveillance and key partners. Although the overall quality of the individual chapters is quite good, there is the variation one would expect in any multiauthored book. Most chapters are the equivalent of short review articles, and they are organized by major theme. Some chapters are excellent, succinct explanations of specific topics in the surveillance of infectious diseases; other chapters are focused on particular systems for surveillance and on specific geographic areas and may not interest all readers. Most chapters deal with systems that are used in the United States, but some describe systems that are used in other parts of the world. The basic chapters would make excellent reading for a public health course in the surveillance of infectious diseases (unusual in most curricula), but for other public health and health sciences courses, the book's price might be a drawback. For the practicing public health epidemiologist who might be faced with a variety of challenges related to the surveillance of infectious diseases, however, the investment would yield a useful reference.(FigureAlexander D. Langmuir.)

The authors of the introductory chapter do a good job of explaining the value of surveillance and how it is used, as well as defining terms and concepts. However, missing from the book is a chapter on the origins and rich history of the surveillance of infectious diseases. Future editions would be richer if they provided this contextual information as a supplement to the historically enlightening chapters on smallpox, poliomyelitis, and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The discussion of the legal underpinnings of the surveillance and control of diseases is an excellent source for reference. However, the authors of most chapters presume that the reader knows how routine surveillance of infectious diseases is done at the local, state, and federal levels in the United States. This is briefly covered in a few chapters, but only in the context of the subject area that is under discussion. A chapter dedicated to discussion of the governmental structures that operate routine systems of surveillance, how the systems are constructed, what practices are used, and how systems interact would be a helpful introduction for many potential readers. The book contains many figures and illustrations, but a number of them are not very clear, useful, or particularly pertinent.

Resources for the teaching of public health surveillance, and especially the surveillance of infectious diseases, are limited to articles that deal with specific situations, some review articles, informatics textbooks, and very few general textbooks, the most notable of which is Steven M. Teutsch and R. Elliott Churchill's Principles and Practice of Public Health Surveillance (second edition; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). The latter is basic, technical, and methodologic, but it is not specifically about the surveillance of infectious diseases. Infectious Disease Surveillance fills a gap in this arena and does it well. It is a readable textbook from a highly credible team of expert authors.

Alfred DeMaria, Jr., M.D.
Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
alfred.demaria@state.ma.us