Surveillance in Denmark

The surveillance system serves several purposes, for instance:

• Detection of disease outbreaks
• Estimation of trends and development over time
• Identification of population groups with special risks of certain diseases, i.e. incidence according to age, gender, geography, and personal characteristics in the form of for instance proceedings and ethnicity
• Estimation of impact of preventable measures such as public information, prevention campaigns, and vaccination programmes
• Detection of changes in bacteria and virus, e.g. occurrence of resistance towards antibiotics or certain pathogenic germs and - via this - prioritization of prevention and control
• Identification and solutions on research questions and hypotheses on infectious diseases

The quality of the Danish surveillance registers is very high and the registers are often used in connection with research projects.

Surveillance includes continuous registration and analyses of possible problems, e.g. changes in occurrence of disease, outbreaks, new microorganisms and resistance patterns or more virulent types of already well-known viruses.

A modern surveillance system comprises not only collection and registration of disease data but also timely and continuous communication of knowledge to the authorities responsible for treatment, prevention and control.

The national surveillance system comprises only diseases of serious character, diseases that are particularly infectious, and most of the vaccine-preventable diseases.