South Africa GERMS-SA Typhoid and Paratyphoid Tabulations 2003

GERMS-SA is a national network of approximately 200 public and private clinical microbiology laboratories participating in an active surveillance program for bacterial and fungal pathogens with public health significance. The population under surveillance is estimated at almost 53 million. Laboratories submit specimens that meet case definitions to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) for confirmation. Additionally, at "enhanced" or "sentinel" sites at 25 hospitals in all nine provinces, nurses have been enrolled as Surveillance Officers who collect additional clinical and epidemiological information on the laboratory-confirmed cases.

The pathogens under GERMS-SA surveillance were chosen from 4 broad categories: AIDS-related opportunistic infections; epidemic-prone diseases; vaccine-preventable diseases; and nosocomial infections.