Surveillance evaluation

Laboratory Audits

Each participating laboratory is audited by the NMSU as often as possible. The audits are done over a 3, 6 or 12 month period and compare the number of cases isolated at a participating laboratory with the number of cases received by the NICD reference laboratories (EDRU,MRU,PRU or RMPRU).

The objective of these audits is:

• To assess the quality of the data sample.
• To ensure that all isolates/ specimens for diseases under surveillance are being reported to the GERMS-SA network
• To ascertain the percentage of missed isolates to monitor representativeness and efficacy of national surveillance
• To use the percentage of those missing to ascertain a ‘correction factor’, to be used in data dissemination and publications
• To aid laboratories which may have difficulties in any of the steps of collection of data