We model 4 populations (i.e., qualitatively different conditions related to the transmission potential, expected population immunity at the time of WPV1 or WPV3 certification, OPV take rates, and surveillance quality) as shown in Table 1 [ 41- 44].
It is possible that variation in surveillance quality could contribute to observed variation in BSI rates between hospitals.
Specifically, in Guatemala, whereas API was declining significantly, SPR was increasing significantly between 1986 and 2005, pointing to a possible decrease in surveillance quality and coverage of diagnosis and treatment during those years.
11 The data available in MQDB were generated during post-marketing surveillance of medicines quality in these countries following similar protocol for sample collection, screening, testing, and reporting.
Postmarketing surveillance of drug quality in low-income countries is often restricted to disease-specific well-financed health programmes such as those that rely on antiretrovirals, antibiotics and antimalarial drugs.
In order to ensure data quality in surveillance systems, development of best practices for recordkeeping and documentation in the public health medical record is also needed.
The importance of antibiotic prophylaxis and its timing is illustrated by the fact that in the US, experts in surgical infection prevention, hospital infection control, and epidemiology have developed guidelines for national surveillance and quality improvement in giving prophylaxis (Bratzler and Houck 2004).
We followed the CDC's recommendations for assessing data quality in public health surveillance systems [ 11].
However, because dengue fever is a notifiable disease and a high priority in Guangdong, surveillance data quality supervision was regularly performed in clinics and hospitals.
We collaborated with the Iraqi Ministry of Health and by conducting the study with the participation of the hospital staff and local capacity strengthening, we aimed to create a long lasting surveillance and quality improvement mechanism in those hospitals, which can be replicated in other resource-poor settings.
