Implementing a hospital based injury surveillance system in Zambia: a preliminary report

The University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, is the nation's premier tertiary referral hospital and a teaching centre for the University of Zambia as well as a research centre of excellence. It was one of the five sites chosen as part of a multinational injury surveillance project conceived to provide preliminary data in response to observations made by public health agencies such as the World Health Organization, and the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the paucity of such data from third world settings. The study covering a period of 6 months from January 2007 to June 2007, used a pre-tested survey instrument crafted by the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico in close consultation with the CDC and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO). A 24-hour system collected a total of 2714 cases, with due care taken to ensure that all the parameters were entered as required.