As measles, a disease once thought to be eradicated from the U.S., makes headlines nationwide, hospitals must be aware of how to track the most recent outbreaks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has documented 102 cases of measles in the U.S. since Jan. 1, 42 of which were connected to an outbreak at Disneyland in California. The CDC documented 644 U.S. cases of measles in 2014, a record number. The majority of people who contracted measles were unvaccinated.
Several interactive tools track the measles outbreaks, among other diseases.
1. Healthmap.org
A project of Boston Children's Hospital, Healthmap aggregates news of new infectious disease outbreaks nationwide from news organizations and official sources. Users can track diseases close to them with the "Outbreaks Near Me" tool or explore a particular disease using the filter system. The website is continuously updated and is available in nine languages.
2. Council on Foreign Relations' Vaccine-Preventable Outbreak map
Tailored to follow specific outbreaks worldwide, the Council on Foreign Relations' Vaccine-Preventable Outbreak map tracks diseases worldwide, including regions that do not have high rates of vaccination. Viewers can filter the information by clicking simple buttons in a sidebar, speeding loading times, and the "Embed" option at the top of the page allows viewers to use the map in their own work. The map's data is aggregated from news media, governments and global health organizations and has information dating back to 2008.
3. World Health Organization's Measles Nucleotide Surveillance
The WHO maintains a publicly accessible database with all the sequenced measles nucleotides to date, which helps in tracking the evolution and virology of the disease. It provides tools to track and find identical or similar measles sequences, showing the trends in outbreaks and how to treat them. Registration for academic use is free.
4. NowTrending.HHS.gov
The Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at HHS launched a challenge in March 2012 to create a web application that would track words in tweets. NowTrending won the contest and tracks diseases via Twitter mentions. The categories are separated into mentions of diseases, tweet locations and user locations. The only downside is that the full historical data is not available to the public, but the website says that it maintains the full historical archive.