Synopsis for April 22, 2005

The MMWR is embargoed until Thursday, 12 PM EDT.

1. Homicide and Suicide Rates ― National Violent Death Reporting System, Six States, 2003
2. Assessing the National Electric Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance Project ― Six Sites, United States, January 01-June 15, 2004
3. Congenital Malaria ― Nassau County, New York, 2004

Homicide and Suicide Rates ― National Violent Death Reporting System, Six States, 2003

The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) provides a clearer picture of the circumstances surrounding violent deaths at the national, regional, and state levels. CDC and participating states are building a strong foundation to collect comprehensive data about violent deaths that can shed light on individual risk factors and community-wide trends, providing families and health professionals, law enforcement, decision makers and others with the information they need to develop interventions that work.

This study releases initial National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) data from the first six participating states (Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, and Virginia). The findings indicate upward trends in both suicide and homicide rates in this group of states from 2000 through 2003. This is in contrast to downward trends in such violent deaths in these states and nationwide from 1993 through 2000. In 2003, the first year of data captured by NVDRS, homicide increased four percent and suicide increased five percent above 2002 rates. Homicide rates among males under age 25 increased 18 percent. Currently, 17 states participate in this state-based surveillance system, which collects timely and more detailed data on violent deaths from death certificates, medical examiner and coroner reports, police records, and crime laboratories. Individually, these sources offer fragmented data and explain violence in a narrow context. Together, they provide detailed information about violent deaths, and these data should offer insight into the how communities can develop programs and policies to reduce the toll of violence in the U.S.

Assessing the National Electric Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance Project ― Six Sites, United States, January 01-June 15, 2004

Public health systems for monitoring of injuries from outpatient use of drugs are needed to better understand the harm from outpatient medications and to help prioritize medication safety issues and target interventions to promote safer drug use. Evaluation of such new public health surveillance systems is challenging but important task for appropriately interpreting, applying, and improving public health surveillance data.

Timely, detailed, and nationally representative monitoring of outpatient adverse drug events (ADEs) is important to help prioritize medication safety issues and target medication safety interventions. In 2003, the CDC, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), and the FDA collaborated to create the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System – Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance (NEISS-CADES) project by adding ADE reporting to a nationally representative injury surveillance system, the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System - All Injury Program. This report assesses the accuracy of ADE reporting by sampling from six of the 64 NEISS-CADES hospitals and found that the cases were likely to be true ADEs, but a substantial proportion of true cases were not reported. The most commonly missed ADEs were cases of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) from diabetes medications and bleeding complications from anticoagulants (blood thinners). As a result of these findings, additional training on identifying and reporting ADEs was initiated (by CDC and CPSC) for all NEISS-CADES hospital coders.

Congenital Malaria ― Nassau County, New York, 2004

Health-care providers should consider malaria as a diagnosis in neonates and young infants, particularly with fever, whose mothers emigrated from areas where malaria is endemic, regardless of the interval between the mother’s emigration and delivery.

Globalization presents unique challenges to the healthcare community. International travel and immigration serve as natural conduits for disease transmission from endemic to non-endemic areas of the world. Linguistic and cultural diversity can complicate effective healthcare delivery as well. Healthcare providers should be educated in the epidemiological risk factors inherent in the globalization process, including recognition and diagnosis of non-endemic diseases such as malaria. To facilitate this process, healthcare delivery systems must make accommodations to meet the unique needs of the immigrant, including having information available in the patient’s native language and tailoring the assessment process to include diseases of epidemiological significance given the patient’s country of origin.

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This page last reviewed April 21, 2005
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