[1] These networks have published data characterizing the spectrum of disease associated with travel to specific regions of the world and among specific groups of travelers, informing post-travel patient evaluation and pre-travel

health advice. Military forces constitute an international traveler population that presents unique opportunities for global infectious disease surveillance. Health data collected during or after military deployment may become part of the patient’s longitudinal medical record, enabling assessments of predeployment health status and vaccinations on deployment-related risks. In some countries, there is near-complete capture of military medical encounters as military personnel receive care almost exclusively JNK inhibitors library in a military or national health system. This could reduce bias compared to surveillance systems

dependent on referrals to specialty clinics, selleck which could miss patients seen only in primary care clinics. Another advantage is that incidence rates can be calculated with more precision as often the size of the population (ie, the denominator) and duration of risk are known. In this issue of the Journal of Travel Medicine, de Laval and colleagues[2] provide a global snapshot of dengue using epidemiological surveillance in deployed French Armed Forces personnel. As part of an established surveillance program, military physicians complete case report forms for patients with dengue symptoms and send them to the Institute of Tropical Medicine at the Army Health Service in Marseille, France. Blood specimens are analyzed in local civilian laboratories or at the National Arbovirus Reference Center at the Institute of Tropical Medicine. This program is an important model for dengue surveillance Linifanib (ABT-869) and, more broadly, for global infectious disease surveillance. For dengue, large data gaps exist, especially in Africa,[3] where mosquito species prevalence and dengue virus serotypes appear to be changing.[4]

De Laval and colleagues demonstrate that surveillance of military populations with appropriate clinical evaluation and laboratory analysis could help fill these gaps. Their surveillance program identified a change in the predominant circulating dengue virus serotype in the French West Indies, which could increase epidemic risk. The French Armed Forces previously demonstrated that real-time military syndromic surveillance can provide early detection of dengue fever outbreaks.[5] The surveillance system captures remote, field-based events through reporting across a variety of platforms, including handheld and satellite communication tools. If such a syndromic surveillance system could also integrate systematic sample collection and analysis, as in the surveillance system used by de Laval and colleagues, it would serve as a model for acute febrile illness surveillance in deployed military populations.