You are here: Home » Global Health » GeoSentinel

GeoSentinel

Detecting geographic and temporal trends in illness among travellers

We are a GeoSentinel site and research centre
GeoSentinel is a worldwide communication and data collection network for the surveillance of travel related illness, formed in 1995 by the International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM) and the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC). It now comprises of 41 travel/tropical medicine clinics chosen to detect geographic and temporal trends in illness among travellers.

See other GeoSentinel Surveillance Sites.

InterHealth was invited to join the network in September 2007 and on the 19th October 2007, GeoSentinel Director, Dr David Freedman visited InterHealth from the US, and formally welcomed us into the network.

“InterHealth is uniquely placed to collect information on the travel, tropical, occupational and psychological health issues experienced by mission, volunteer and aid sector travellers, whilst they are overseas. The team is looking forward to being part of this global initiative and making a significant contribution from our sector.”
Dr Vanessa Field, GeoSentinel Site Director (InterHealth clinician)

The aims of GeoSentinel

Track geographic and temporal trends in infectious diseases among travellers, immigrants, and refugees.
Conduct syndromic surveillance that may herald pandemic influenza, return of SARS, or bio-terrorist events.
Identify yet to be described emerging infectious diseases among international travellers.
Disseminate relevant information and suggested response options for new or acutely emerging infections, including potential bio-terrorism threats to the network of GeoSentinel providers, the larger network of ISTM providers, and to collaborating networks.

What it means for InterHealth

InterHealth contributes to the GeoSentinel network by collecting travel histories and recording outcomes following screening from all returned travellers that we see. This data is then anonymously entered into the central GeoSentinel database. InterHealth, is now the fifth largest contributor in the whole network and largest contributor worldwide of data in the mission/volunteer/aid sectors, entering 1109 records of returned travellers in these sectors in its first year. Since joining the network, InterHealth has contributed data from 1359 returned travellers.

The information collected from travellers seen at InterHealth plays a vital role in furthering the understanding of the causes of illness experienced by InterHealth’s clients which in turn allows evidence-based, tailored and targeted preventative advice to be given by our clinicians.

Research

Alongside data collection, InterHealth is actively involved in the analysis of this data. One research project, entitled ‘An analysis of returned mission/volunteer/humanitarian aid workers to InterHealth, a UK GeoSentinel site’,
has been completed and submitted for presentation at an up-coming international conference . Further research will be performed in the next year.

Conferences

On May 25th, the 4 day biennial conference of the International Society of Travel Medicine started in Budapest. It was the 11th international conference and thousands of travel doctors and nurses turned up from all over the world. InterHealth has attended every year since 1994.

Put together with great care and expertise, Vanessa Field and Nicki Boddington prepared a scientific poster to communicate InterHealth’s contribution to the GeoSentinel database. Please download the poster below to read about the demographics, travel patterns, and region-specific morbidity of mission/volunteer/humanitarian aid (MVHA) workers.

Scientific poster: An analysis of returned mission/volunteer/ humanitarian aid workers to InterHealth, London, UK

For further information please visit the GeoSentinel website or contact Dr Vanessa Field at [email protected]