National Influenza Surveillance Committee

Role

The National Influenza Surveillance Committee (NISC) has an ongoing role to:

• develop and maintain effective, responsive and scalable national influenza surveillance systems
• promote consistency in influenza surveillance across jurisdictions and systems
• characterise the severity and burden of seasonal influenza epidemics and pandemics
• develop and maintain a system to understand early clinical, epidemiological, transmission and virological parameters in an influenza pandemic.

Members

The NISC includes representatives from:

• Australian Government Department of Health
• state and territory health departments
• New Zealand Government Ministry of Health
• Public Health Laboratory Network (PHLN)
• World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza (WHO CC)
• National Influenza Centres
  • Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research (ICPMR)
  • PathWest Laboratory Medicine, WA
  • Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL)
• Australian Sentinel Practice Research Network (ASPREN)
• Public Health Rapid, Emergency, Disease and Syndromic Surveillance (PHREDSS)
• Influenza Complications Alert Network (FluCAN)
• Paediatric Active Enhanced Disease Surveillance (PAEDS) network
• healthdirect Australia
• FluTracking.

Meetings

The NISC meets regularly throughout the year, and hosts extra meetings during the influenza season.

Related committees and groups

The NISC is a subcommittee of, and reports to the Communicable Diseases Network Australia (CDNA).