Evaluation of report level and the factors effecting on reporting of mandatory notification of communicable diseases ?group a diagnosed at public and private hospitals in Hatay in 2009.

The surveillance of communicable diseases is an epidemilogical practice including collection of uniform and continuous data, analysis of the data, interpretation and distribution of this information to the related departments to prevent and control the comminicable diseases.First step of surveillance is collection of the data which is done with a reporting system specific for each country.The purpose of this research is to evaluate the reporting system of mandatory notification of communicable diseases diagnosed at the public and private hospitals, to locate the data loss, to determine the rate and reason of data loss and to propose solutions.At the first step of this study, hospital records of 3418 patients diagnosed with mandatory notification of communicable diseases-grup A, were investigated. Secondly, 385 physician were enrolled a survey to assess their knowledge and manner of reporting system of communicable diseases. Focus group discussion was conducted between reporting system responsibles to evaluate the problems and solutions in reporting system.In this study, when hospital records of 3418 patients were analyzed, the reporting system was found inadequate in all mandatory notification of communicable diseases and reporting rate was 15.4% (For probable/definite diagnosis 14% and for definite diagnosis 63%). Tuberculosis was the most reported diseases (41.8%). Form-014 were underfilled at the hospitals. Only 82.9% of patients were reported on time.At most, data loss was observed at the hospitals. The reporting system of mandatory notification of communicable diseases was found out to be better at the public hospitals than private hospitals and a statistically significant association was observed.It is observed that the level of knowledge in reporting system and the physician?s expressing status of reporting diseases are related with the education on this issue they have got.Providing regular and continuous training program for the health professionals and developing a software which will reduce human factors will be the most important support to prevent data loss in reporting system.