USAID IDDS: Disease Detection and Surveillance Across Sectors

With a population of over 270 million across 17,500 islands, Indonesia faces challenges for disease detection and surveillance. Its tropical climate, high population mobility, and susceptibility to natural disasters compound these challenges. The United States supports Indonesia to advance effective disease detection and surveillance systems.

Detecting priority pathogens and antimicrobial resistance through improved surveillance and diagnostic networks is critical to preventing, detecting, and responding to priority zoonotic diseases, such as bird flu. Through a sustainable One Health systems strengthening approach that includes an early warning system, infectious diseases can be stopped in their tracks long before they become epidemics.

Infectious Disease Detection and Surveillance (USAID IDDS)

Starting with a strong focus on surveillance, IDDS provides technical support and participates in relevant One Health forums to bolster Indonesia’s self-reliance and multi-sectoral capacity in preventing, detecting, and responding to priority zoonotic diseases, including bird flu and rabies. This effort helps prepare the Government of Indonesia for outbreaks and enhance early warning systems for infectious diseases. One such information system is the Zoonoses and Emerging Infectious Diseases Information System (SIZE, or Sistem Informasi Zoonoses dan Emerging Infectious Diseases in Indonesian), a sustainable global model for One Health that integrates human, livestock, and wildlife data from existing government surveillance systems across sectors.

In Indonesia, IDDS works to reduce health threats posed by infectious diseases. The project’s objectives in Indonesia are to:

Improve the detection of diseases of public health importance through an accessible, accurate, adaptable, timely, and integrated diagnostic network system.
Improve the quality of real-time surveillance systems for pathogens of greatest public health concern, including zoonotic diseases.
Generate evidence-based guidance and innovative solutions to strengthen in-country diagnostic networks and surveillance systems.

Results

IDDS objectives in Indonesia, all of which will be achieved in collaboration with the USAID Global Health Security (GHS) program and other stakeholders, are to:

Support the establishment and functioning of sustainable cross-sectoral coordination working groups on zoonosis and emerging infectious diseases (EIDs); three sub-working groups, namely the One Health Laboratory Network, Integrated Surveillance, and SIZE are currently operating;
Improve capacity of public health surveillance laboratories, particularly in detecting new zoonotic pathogens that have the potential for outbreaks and pandemics by providing Predict Laboratory Protocol Training and rollout;
Contribute to updated guidelines on linking of information from human and animal labs with human and animal epidemiology to better assess and address health risks for priority zoonosis and EIDs;
Provide coordination support for the SIZE system and development of a sustainable regulatory strategy; as a result, Indonesia migrated SIZE to its National Data Center.