Project title: „Support Invasive Bacterial Vaccine-preventeble Disease Sentinel  

Surveillance activities in Tbilisi“. WHO, 01.03.2018-31.12.2018

Project Summary

a).Project Objectives:

To establish sentinel site surveillance of Bacterial Meningitis among children less than 5 years of age with an emphasis on Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), Streptococcus pneumoniae (Sp) and neiseria meningitidis (Nm).

This surveillance system aims to:  

• Provide quality data necessary for studying the burden of disease caused by each of these organisms. These data will be most important in supporting the sustainability of decisions for vaccines for Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), Streptococcus pneumoniae (Sp) and Neisseria meningitidis (Nm) . These data will also assist with post introduction immunization program monitoring

• Build national capacity for long-term laboratory-based surveillance for communicable diseases.

This surveillance network will focus on:

• diseases/syndrome: bacterial meningitis

• age group: children less than 5 years

• Organisms: Haemophilus influenzae type b, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Neisseria meningitidis

b).Project Implementation:

• M. Iashvili children’s central clinic is selected as a sentinel site and NCDC Lugar as a referense laboratory for final confirmation;

• Perform continuous monitoring and supervision of staff at sentinel hospital site involved in the project.

• Ensure ongoing, consistent and proper enrollment and registration of hospitalized cases of suspected bacterial meningitis according to defined enrollment criteria, protocols, and time. Ensure correct collection, storage, transportation and laboratory testing of CSF specimens from those patients to identify cases caused by the following pathogens: Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae , Neisseria meningitidis.

• NCDC Lugar National Laboratory is receiving, retesting, confirming identification, storing, and maintain the national collection of viable isolates from sentinel site.

• Sentinel hospital laboratory and national reference laboratory is participating in EQA by receiving proficiency panel (PT).

• Ensure participation in another EQA component shipping an agreed number of clinical samples and any corresponding isolates for duplicate testing and further molecular investigation at Public Health England (PHE) reference laboratory.

• Maintain laboratories with reagents, laboratory supplies and costs provided by WHO/ Europe.

• Enter clinical, epidemiological and laboratory data of suspected meningitis cases into database provided by WHO and report results to  WHO/Europe each month.

c).Expected results:

High quality data on etiological factors causing Bacterial meningitis in children <5 years of age.