Contact Tracing

Contact tracing, and contact investigation called, is a medical- epidemiological method in the fight against dangerous infectious diseases.

In order to successfully combat an epidemic, it is necessary to find any infected person. This can be medically treated for an infected person to another can transfer to other people be prevented. At the " contact tracing " the aim is to identify persons who had direct or indirect contact with an ill person (index person). It all potentially infected by the index person persons are advised informed about the existing risk of possible infection and regarding necessary measures. For infectious diseases, it can be both viral and bacterial diseases to. The study area is regulated in all democratic countries. For which diseases it is applied in each case decided by the health authority of a country.

A typical example of a decades applied contact investigation is tuberculosis. Once diagnosed with a human tuberculosis, its surroundings such as family, school class, military unit will also be tested for tuberculosis and, if necessary, treatment is started. The likelihood of damage to the infected person with TB and a transfer to others can be reduced.

Contact tracing is an efficient and cost-effective medical- epidemiological measure to specifically detect infection chains of infectious diseases. Through contact tracing can be collected on the spreading patterns of infectious disease and its spread will ultimately curbed by lower costs a wealth of information.