Bioterrorism Surveillance Program
The focus of the Bioterrorism Surveillance Program is to build surveillance detection capacity as part of public health preparedness.
The Bioterrorism Surveillance Program oversees several systems aimed at:
- Strengthening detection and
- Early recognition of illness.
New Hampshire's early event detection and preparedness efforts rely upon special expertise in biological agents such as anthrax, botulism, smallpox etc. that this program can provide.
The Bioterrorism Surveillance program oversees the use of several systems. These systems rely on monitoring patterns of symptoms such as fevers, and rash that are associated with illness.
Symptoms are organized together and referred to as syndromes.
By monitoring syndromes, it is possible to:
- Recognize subtle changes in health across the state, and
- Identify places where the number of people experiencing a set of symptom is different from normal.
These Bioterrorism Surveillance systems may serve as a safety net to help identify clusters of disease or illness that may not be detected through traditional surveillance activities.
The goal of Bioterrorism Surveillance is to detect the presence of communicable diseases in the community when the first symptoms appear.