Characterising acute public health events in the South East Asia Region of the WHO using Event-Based Surveillance

WHO global alert and response systematically gathers official reports and rumours of suspected outbreaks from a wide range of formal and informal sources. Formal reports of suspected outbreaks are received from ministries of health, national institutes of public health, WHO Regional and Country offices, WHO collaborating centres, civilian and military laboratories, academic institutes, and nongovernmental organizations. In order to ensure a comprehensive picture of the epidemic threat to global health security, WHO also gathers epidemic intelligence from all informal sources. With the advent of modern communication technologies, many initial outbreak reports now originate in the electronic media and electronic discussion groups.