JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Due to the war and limited access to health facilities, surveillance of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) has been expanded to include all hospitals since 2017.

Objective:

To assess usefulness of SARI surveillance in Sana’a city and to assess its performance in terms of attributes.

Methods:

The CDC’s updated guideline was used for evaluating surveillance systems. Four qualitative attributes including; stability, simplicity, flexibility, acceptability and data quality as quantitative attribute were assessed. Depth interview with stakeholders at central level and self-administered questionnaires with five Likert scale and register review at peripheral level were used for collecting data. Scoring for indicators was used to calculate the total gained scores for each attributer and percentage for ranking as poor < 60 %, average 60 - <80%, good 80% - < 90% and excellent ≥ 90%.

Results:

The SARI surveillance was useful and accounted 94% gained scores. The overall performance for the five attributes was average (64%). It was good (82%) at central level where flexibility was excellent (93%) and stability was average (72%).The performance at peripheral level was poor (51%) where simplicity (61%), acceptability (74%) were average and the data quality was poor (20%).

Conclusions:

Expanding SARI surveillance with lack of staff training, central communication and supervision might be main reason for weak performance at peripheral level. Supporting SARI program activities, selection of SARI reporting sites, surveillance team at each site based on WHO criteria are highly recommended.