PURPOSE: This study reviewed the development of and analyzed the early results from syndromic surveillance based on emergency departments, which was developed to detect bioterrorism attacks, especially during the 2002 FIFA Korea-Japan World Cup games. METHOD: Data from homepages and server computers were analyzed from May 13 2002, to August 5 2002. The data were gathered everyday from 121 emergency departments in Korea via the internet by using PC or PDA. Some data gathered via telephone or FAX were also digitalized. RESULTS: The daily report rate was 82.5% on average. Most of the cases were acute respiratory syndrome (63.4%) and acute sporadic diarrheal syndrome (34.8%). No bioterrorism was confirmed during this period. The peak times and distributions of sporadic and cluster cases of acute diarrheal syndrome are not equivalent. In the case of level 2 reports, there was an average of 12 cases per one institute and 32.8 cases per institute of level 1 and 2 reports totally. CONCLUSIONS: The emergency department syndromic surveillance system for bioterrorism is the first everyday reporting system based on the clinical basis in emergency depart-ments. It has been and is functioning without large problems, but exact knowledge of and more participation by reporting institutes are required. It is necessary to survey the results for a longer period and to correct the early problems if we want to know the ultimate usefulness of this system.
Academies and Institutes ; Bioterrorism* ; Emergencies* ; Emergency Service, Hospital* ; Internet ; Korea ; Telephone

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to develop the Korean version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (K-WEMWBS) and to examine its factorial structure, reliability, and convergent/discriminant validity. METHODS: In this study, the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS), a self-rating measure for assessment of mental well-being, was translated into Korean. It was completed by 222 respondents, including 117 healthy subjects and 105 psychiatric patients from both inpatient and outpatient clinics at Soonchunhyang University Hospitals in Bucheon, Cheonan, and Seoul. RESULTS: The K-WEMWBS showed good content validity. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a single factor structure. The Cronbach's alpha value for the K-WEMWBS was 0.944, which demonstrated good internal consistency. Test-retest reliability at 2-8 weeks was high (0.789). The K-WEMWBS showed high correlations with mental health, positive affect, and quality of life scales. Moderate negative correlation was observed between the K-WEMWBS and the negative affect scale. Discriminant validity was partially identified. Statistically significant differences in scores were observed between the psychiatric patient group and the control group. CONCLUSION: The results of this study indicate that the K-WEMWBS is a reliable and valid instrument for assessment of mental well-being, particularly the positive aspects of mental health.
Ambulatory Care Facilities ; Chungcheongnam-do ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Gyeonggi-do ; Hospitals, University ; Humans ; Inpatients ; Mental Health ; Quality of Life ; Seoul ; Weights and Measures