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The Pandemic Influenza Severity Assessment (PISA) tool is a framework for using existing influenza surveillance data to determine a qualitative judgment on the severity of a current influenza epidemic or pandemic in comparison to past epidemics and pandemics.

In this context, severity refers to how many people are infected with the influenza virus, how sick the infected people are and the effect of the epidemic or pandemic on the healthcare system and society.

The tool is intended to be used at the national level so that each country can describe the epidemiological situation in-country and adjust their response measures. Country severity assessments will contribute to a WHO global situational analysis and inform global decisions and recommendations.

The target audience for this training course is public health professionals at the national level who perform, or plan to perform, national influenza severity assessments and who can contribute to global influenza severity assessments. The employer and employees of these public health officers would also benefit from this learning module, as would any other public health professional working on influenza epidemiology.

The purpose of the first module of this course is to introduce the concept of influenza severity assessment to those not familiar with it and to pique interest in the tool so that potential users will want to learn more about its use and application. In-depth training modules on the PISA methods and their application are planned for later this year.

Published in GI-Mail 11/2018 (German edition). Sign up for GI-Mail here.  

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