[Epidemiologic surveillance in the Army and Public Health: as exemplified by rubella]

Since 1993, several outbreaks of rubella are annually reported from the French military. This trend reveals a transfer of the reservoir of wild virus towards a non-immune population of male adolescents and young adults, as a result of the rubella control programmes. This paradoxical phenomenon should disappear within the next decade, when the new vaccinal schedule including a combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine for the children of both sexes 11 to 13 years old will have been implemented. Meanwhile, the military system of weekly epidemiological report will be usable as a national observatory for the rubella. Moreover, providing specific data in real time, it will be able to support a strategy of intervention for an early neutralization of epidemics.