Brazil presents particular problems for surveillance
of infectious diseases. These include its continental size,
uneven distribution of resources, difficulty of communication and
access in some of the more remote areas, as well as large areas
covered by tropical rain-forests. Surveillance for infectious
diseases in Brazil has traditionally been carried out in a
passive manner by government authorities or as individual
initiatives. Most effort has been directed in the collecting and
tabulating of data on notifiable infections. A limited amount of
laboratory support has been available for the isolation and
identification of the etiological agents. More recently molecular
methods have been introduced in the analysis of these data.
