WHO Technical Meeting on Piloting RSV Surveillance based on the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, June 2016.

Overview

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is an important viral respiratory pathogen, causing acute, sometimes fatal lower respiratory tract infections in infants and young children. In addition, RSV contributes substantially to severe morbidity in the elderly. With significant and rapid progress in the development of RSV vaccine, it is expected that a RSV vaccine would become available in the next few years. There is a need to develop a global surveillance platform to serve as evidence base including a better understanding of the epidemiology, seasonality, high risk groups and circulation of the RSV. The WHO Global Influenza Programme (GIP) is in the process of implementing a pilot of RSV surveillance based on the influenza surveillance platform, the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS). The aim of the pilot is to test the feasibility of building on the capacities of GISRS, an established, well-functioning and long-term network, where many countries already collect and test samples, for targeting RSV.