Question

You are now an epidemiologist in a state health department that is going to develop a surveillance system for cases of waterborne illnesses such as giardiasis and cryptosporidiosis. The secretary of health has asked you to select two different types of a surveillance system and evaluate them in terms of their advantages and disadvantages for doing surveillance on these diseases.

Type of Surveillance System	Advantages	Disadvantages

Answer should be in response to public health field as an epidemiologist

Answer 1

1. Monitoring and detection of water for presence of these organismsorganisms

Advantages :

1. Includes filtration of large volumes of water , followed by processing , centrifugation and clarification for detecting the microorganisms.The main advantage is method being quantitative.

2. Monitoring the quality of water helps in reduction of spreading of infection.

3. It helps to take the preventive measures in improving the quality of water

Disadvantages

involves thorough checking of various water samples

monitoring of water is difficult , tedious , inefficient and is of limited value.

2. Molecular characterisation of water borne outbreaks

Advantages

Advances in molecular techniques helps in approaching in a better way to understand the epidemiology of the diseases .

Assists in strain identification for greater accuracy in determination of source of outbreak.

Disadvantages