Language Specific Gaps in Identifying Early Epidemic Signals – A Case Study of the Malay Language

Authors

  • Feroza Binti Sulaiman Ministry of Health, Malaysia
  • NK Semara Yanti Udayana One Health Collaborating Center
  • Dyah Ayu Shinta Lesmanawati Universitas Gadjah Mada
  • Mallory Trent University of New South Wales
  • Abrar Ahmad Chughtai University of New South Wales
  • Chandini Raina MacIntyre University of New South Wales

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31646/gbio.33

Keywords:

Epidemic, surveillance, Internet, Malay, language, Indonesia, Malaysia

Abstract

Background:

Internet-based surveillance systems have become invaluable tools to complement traditional surveillance in the early detection of infectious disease outbreaks. Search results limited to only English-language sources may lead to missed opportunities in global outbreak monitoring efforts. The Malay language has 290 million native speakers across the Southeast Asian region (Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and the southern parts of Thailand and the Philippines), which is an important region for outbreaks. The aim of this research is to determine the completeness of reports of Malay language outbreak detection by commonly used open source surveillance platforms.

Methods:

We searched ProMED-mail, HealthMap, and Google News to investigate outbreak events in Malaysia and Indonesia between 1st August 2016 and 31st August 2017. We also cross-checked published epidemic reports in Medline to determine the proportion of outbreaks that are published.

Results:

A total of 371 entries from ProMED-mail and HealthMap were included. A Google News search query using Malay language keywords resulted in 453 news outbreak reports, 98 of which were missed by either or both ProMED-mail and HealthMap. During the study time frame, only 40 published epidemic reports were found in MEDLINE, showing the importance of informal data sources to identify outbreaks. Some diseases such as mumps, dengue and avian influenza had different local terminology in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Conclusions:

Search results limited to only English-language sources may lead to reduced outbreak detection. The inclusion of keywords in the Malay language improves epidemic intelligence in the region, but needs to be nuanced for local terminology, which may differ between countries. Informal Internet-based surveillance can improve compliance with International Health Regulations (IHR) for low income countries, because it is less resource-intensive than formal surveillance. However, there is a need to include local language search terms to improve outbreak detection, especially in regions at high risk of emerging infectious diseases.

Author Biographies

Feroza Binti Sulaiman, Ministry of Health, Malaysia

Dr Sulaiman is Special Officer to Director-General of Health Malaysia.

Chandini Raina MacIntyre, University of New South Wales

Professor Raina MacIntyre is Professor of Global Biosecurity at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney. As Head of the Biosecurity Program, she leads research in epidemiology, vaccinology, bioterrorism prevention, mathematical modelling, public health and clinical trials in infectious diseases. Her research includes personal protective equipment, vaccinology, epidemics of emerging infectious diseases and bioterrorism prevention. She is an expert in influenza epidemiology, adult vaccination, bioterrorism and rapid epidemic intelligence and has led the largest body of research internationally on face masks and respirators in health care workers. She has a 20 year track record in public health control of infectious diseases including vaccinology, surveillance and program design. She has over 350 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Her research is underpinned by extensive field outbreak investigation experience. She is a graduate of the Australian Field Epidemiology Training program and has extensive experience in shoe-leather epidemiology of infectious diseases outbreaks. Her in-depth understanding of the science of outbreak investigation draws from this experience combined with her clinical training as a specialist physician and her academic training through a Masters and PhD in Epidemiology. Her passion for field epidemiology led her to co-found the ARM network for Australian field outbreak response. She also has an interest in the ethics of medicine, and specifically in dual-use research of concern in the fields of synthetic biology and genetic engineering, and the risk this poses to biosecurity.

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Published

2019-10-14

How to Cite

Sulaiman, F. B., Yanti, N. S., Lesmanawati, D. A. S., Trent, M., Chughtai, A. A., & MacIntyre, C. R. (2019). Language Specific Gaps in Identifying Early Epidemic Signals – A Case Study of the Malay Language. Global Biosecurity, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.31646/gbio.33

Issue

Vol. 1 (2019)

Section

Research Articles

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Copyright (c) 2019 The Author(s)

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Received 2019-07-19
Accepted 2019-09-27
Published 2019-10-14