The recent chain of outbreaks caused by H5N1 started among poultry in South Korea in December 2003, and has affected 61 countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe leading to the deaths of millions of poultry and more than 10 thousands of wild birds [3], [4].
Thus, a chain of outbreaks were considered to be part of the same cluster.
Furthermore, quality systems following the whole chain of outbreak management (alert, outbreak control measures, implementation, and evaluation) are needed.
These 35 categories or subdomains represented 10 main domains: "Scale of the outbreak and epidemiology", "Control measures", "Diagnostics", "Logistic support", "Aftercare and conclusion", "Communication", "Logistics", "Upscaling", "Coordination of the chain of outbreak control" and "Continuity of care".
We selected key recommendations for the broad range of tasks in infectious disease outbreak response, from "control measures" and "diagnostics" to processes such as "coordination of the chain of outbreak control".
Timeliness of result reporting: Prompt analysis and feedback from the National Poliovirus Laboratory in Baghdad to the local and international health authorities in cases of emergency is essential to cut the chain of outbreak transmission.
If more and more parents stop supporting vaccines and immunizations, disease like measles will continue to rise, we will see sustained chains of outbreaks, and we will all see the real impact of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.
Additionally, sequence sampling of neuraminidases is not independent but biased by transmission chains and clusters of outbreaks.
Although PHL had chain-of-custody experience through its Toxicology and Environmental Laboratories and outbreak testing during the West Nile outbreak, nothing could have prepared the laboratory for the events of October 2001.
Food safety experts say a better system for tracking food throughout the supply chain could help identify the source of outbreaks sooner, as well as quickly eliminate regions and products that are mistakenly suspected of being the source.
Over the last few decades, molecular phylogenetic analyses of RNA viruses have been used frequently in the study of outbreaks and transmission chains [ 1- 5].
