Community-based surveillance (CBS) is the systematic detection and reporting of events of public health significance within a community by community members.
Many disease outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics begin with a cluster of unwell people or sudden deaths in a community which are not detected early enough by traditional surveillance systems. Often, the community members are aware of the health threat, but the people who can mobilize response resources receive this information too late to limit the spread of a disease.
By using feedback from community volunteers, we can collect, analyse and interpret information on local health risks in order to prevent, detect and quickly respond to disease outbreaks. CBS can stop disease outbreaks from turning into large scale epidemics and pandemics by enabling a rapid and targeted response from local health or veterinary authorities—ultimately saving lives and reducing harm on communities.
CBS can also be used during emergency response to active disease outbreaks to support early case detection and help minimize further spread.
First, community volunteers are selected by the community itself. More often than not, these are existing Red Cross or Red Crescent volunteers. They then receive training in how to recognize signs of different diseases and report them using whichever CBS tool is most appropriate for the context (for instance an SMS system or digital app). Volunteers are then grouped into teams and assigned a supervisor who will oversee their work and receive their alerts for potential escalation to local authorities. Volunteers are also trained to provide a first level community response (such as community-level epidemic control measures and first aid) so they can assist while local authorities mount their response.
CBS relies on there being a mechanism in place with local authorities to ensure there is a response and investigation to alerts coming from the community. The relevant Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture, National centre for disease control and the Red Cross or Red Cross Society must all agree and work together to implement CBS.