Communicable diseases remain one of the highest priorities for public health both
nationally and internationally. Effective surveillance is the cornerstone to the
prevention and control of communicable diseases. Surveillance is carried out by the
Infectious Disease Prevention and Control Unit within the Health Promotion and
Disease Prevention Directorate and provides a mechanism for the co-ordination of
national communicable disease surveillance activities in co operation with the clinical
and laboratory services and other departments and entities. There is however, a need
to strengthen the coordination and planning of surveillance activities at the national
level, and to enhance the strategic plan for responding to the priority public health
problems identified.
This revised National Communicable Diseases Control Strategy is an initiative of the
Ministry for Health. The strategy sets out to: describe the scope and nature of the
threat posed by infectious diseases to the health of the population of Malta and
establish the priorities for action to combat the present as well as possible future threat
posed by infectious diseases. In the development of this strategy, the experience and
opinion of various experts were incorporated. This strongly supports the need for a
broad based approach to these threats.
The Strategy emphasises the need for the co-ordination of national surveillance for the
planning and prioritisation of interventions, the optimal use of laboratory science in
communicable disease management and the availability of an effective response
capacity for outbreaks of national significance. ewritten