Investigators: Dr Christopher Blyth
External collaborators: Allen Cheng, Paul Kelly, Tom Kotsimbos, Heath Kelly, Tony Korman, Deb Friedman, Louis Irving, Sanjaya Senanayake, Grant Waterer, Simon Brown, Mark Holmes, Cameron Hunter, Simon Bowler, John Upham, Graham Simpson, Stephen Brady, Saliya Hewagama, Dominic Dwyer, Jen Kok, Peter Wark, Kristine Macartney
FLuCAN is a national sentinel surveillance program for severe influenza in both adults and children. The network collects real-time clinical and laboratory data on patients hospitalised with influenza to help assess influenza severity and vaccine effectiveness, to help guide public health policy.
Influenza is a common respiratory viral infection that affects up to 10% of the population each year. Previous studies demonstrate that young children have the highest rate of hospitalisation. The Influenza Complications Alert Network (FluCAN), a national sentinel surveillance program for severe influenza, was established in 2009 to monitor hospitalisations in Australian adults with confirmed influenza. In 2014, two tertiary pediatric hospitals in New South Wales and Western Australia from the separate Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance network (PAEDS) were included in the existing FluCAN sentinel system. In 2017, this collaboration was extended to include four further PAEDS hospitals resulting in a nationally representative pediatric influenza surveillance program.
Funding: Commonwealth Department of Health