Application of event-based biosurveillance to disease emergence in isolated regions

Abstract

Introduction Argus is an event-based surveillance system, which captures information from publicly available Internet media in multiple languages. The information is contextualized, and indications and warning (I&W) of disease are identified. Reports are generated by regional experts and are made available to the system’s users (1). In this study a small-scale disease event, plague emergence, was tracked in a rural setting, despite media suppression and a low availability of epidemiological information.