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Speaking Points
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An outbreak, or the
occurrence of more cases of disease than expected, can be detected in a
number of ways:
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By review of routinely collected surveillance data as we discussed
previously, this in one of the main reasons we conduct surveillance
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Astute observation of something out of the ordinary by a health care
provider, such as an unusual sentinel event or cluster of events. In
September 2001, the first anthrax case was detected in Florida by an astute
physician; West Nile virus was originally detected in New York City by a
neurologist who saw a cluster of patients with an unusual encephalopathy
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Members of the community observe unusual trend in illness recent NYT
article about woman who noticed from reading local obituaries that many of
the people who were reported to have died from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease in New Jersey had connections to a local race track. As a result of
this womans observation, two U.S. Senators have asked the CDC to investigate
this possible cluster
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References
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Max DT. The Case of the Cherry Hill Cluster. New York Times.
2004 March 28; Sect. 6:50 (col. 1).
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