To provide technical support to national health authorities of countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region in establishing a syndromic surveillance system for epidemic-prone communicable diseases in their countries, the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean organized a subregional meeting on syndromic surveillance in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on 18–20 December 2011.
Syndromic surveillance can be defined as the use of routinely available data, both health and non-health related, for public health surveillance purposes. It is based on the timely collection, collation, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of routine data from different sources to enhance the early detection of outbreaks and other important public health events; hence mitigating the impact of these events by reducing associated morbidity, mortality and the economic impact of such events.