Hi Saira,
I am not sure, that I understood where you are heading for with this question…..
In 'passive surveillance', the health facilities involved send monthly reports of all cases of (mostly) vaccine-preventable diseases on a regular form. That is very commonly done with immunization data. The term ‘passive’ just refers to the fact that the surveillance is not exerted in itself for the purpose of ‘monitoring’, but a regular and ongoing activity of the health facilities. Basically you analyze data that is already there.
In contrast ‘monitoring’ refers more to the act of taking disease data from populations to see changes in the incidence or severity of disease. Could be any disease entity or at the workplace, whatsoever. Monitoring programs are put into place to solve a problem.
The difference is more or less conceptually. Probably, you may find it useful to read this paper on malaria:
PLoS Med. 2011 Jan 25;8(1):e1000400. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000400, A research agenda for malaria eradication: monitoring, evaluation, and surveillance
Read this interesting paper for an example of a passive surveillance analysis: Am J Prev Med. 2008 Apr;34(4 Suppl):S134-9. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2007.11.004
Good luck!
SR
Hi Poul,
I agree, not clearly described.
I think monitoring is a broad term that describes the ongoing efforts to asses health- related problems in a given population. Surveillance is one method of monitoring health-related problems.
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