Identification, verification and response to acute
chemical incidents
On a daily basis, information from a range of informal and formal
sources was reviewed to identify acute chemical incidents
and outbreaks of disease of unknown etiology that might be of
chemical origin. The principal informal sources were the Global
Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), ProMED-Mail,
and Hazard Intelligence (HInt) (Box 1 contains further information
on these sources), as well as other news media. GPHIN
and ProMED-Mail were selected because they had already
been valuable for communicable disease surveillance and were
of sufficiently broad coverage to include chemicals. HInt was
a chemicals-specific source. All three had international scope.
Formal information sources included reports from national
authorities, WHO offices, WHO Collaborating Centres and
other United Nations agencies. ChemiNet and the communicable
disease outbreak verification teams were additional
sources, the latter particularly for diseases of unknown etiology