Before I became involved with disease
surveillance, I used to be a clinic physician, a general practitioner in our
community
whose primary concern then was to treat and manage cases who consulted me. In other words, my world revolved around my patients who get to see me when they need my medical services. I had no interest in knowing if there were people out there suffering or dying from a certain disease. Sometimes I heard some of my patients telling my staff that a number of people from the
community were confined in the hospital for a certain disease. I just said to myself, hospital cases are for resident physicians and community health concerns are for the Public Health Physicians. I don't see myself getting involved with any of community health projects or activities. I don't realize the fact that I am a member of the community. What a shame!
After seven years of clincal practice, I found my job very boring and monotonous that I decided to venture on something more challenging, something new, one that I haven't done before in my life. I accepted the training on Epidemiology and Disease
Surveillance. It was then that I found myself revitalized and adjusting well to this new field. The trainees were sent to the field in several occassions to investigate if there's really an outbreak, how many were affected, the place and the time of occurrence and to know the cause of the outbreak. I've been to many far flung areas I've never been in my whole life but I treasured every moment of it. We have experienced different disease outbreaks such as Dengue, Meningococcemia, Typhoid Dever, Cholera, Hepatitis A and B, Leptospirosis, Diphtheria, and Measles, Though exposed at times, none of us ever contacted any of these diseases. I believed this is what you called 'divine intervention'.
What do we do in surveillance? Every week, the surveillance officers collect data from the hospital sentinels. Then the data are encoded in their respective computers, then analyzed per disease and per city/municipality. It is in so doing that specific areas with outbreak are detected. The respective LGUs are notified. Outbreak investigation and immediate response follow. Effective intervention will bring about cessation of disease transmission as well as significant decrease in the number of cases. I find this very fulfilling since you become instrumental in saving not only a life but the lives of the people in the community.