•Source : Division of Planning and Coordination
•Date : 2013-08-01

      The Epidemiology Bulletin (EB) was a monthly journal when it was first introduced in early 1984. The objectives for publication of EB are to disseminate and provide information on outbreaks occurred in domestic and foreign areas and statistics data of notifiable communicable diseases in Taiwan areas; to serve as a reference for public health workers and a scientific support in developing relevant policy. The EB is a journal with the longest history in communicable disease control system in Taiwan. The readers include staffs in medical centers or hospitals, colleges or schools, and libraries, as well as general public all over the world.

      Initially, the EB was created by Dr. Michael Malison, and then consultant from the United States, as part of the Field Epidemiology Training Program in Taiwan, with the format refers to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The EB is published in two versions, English and Chinese, which are identical in content. Dr. Malison was appointed as the editor-in-chief and the articles to be published are reviewed and decided by the editorial committee.

      The EB is just like a chronicle of significant epidemics in Taiwan, which documents the tracks of the epidemic that has occurred here in history. The epidemiologic investigations conducted by public health workers, sharing of experience in communicable diseases control, and valuable results achieved by laboratory research can be part of the contents of the EB. In order to meet the trends internationally, the English version is sent to readers in 30 countries on five continents to strengthen information exchange in international community and improve other countries’ understandings to epidemics in this country.

       In order to provide the latest information on significant epidemics in a more timely fashion and to promote the timeliness of the contents, the EB has been published biweekly with on-line electronic version since Volume 26 released in January 2010. Subsequently, the schedule for publication of the EB was set at second and fourth week of the month in June 2011. Moreover, in order to provide better service for the readers, the website for the EB was modified in 2010 to include the functions of offering epidemic information in Taiwan and other countries; searching, direct reading, and downloading specific articles previously released in EB; simplifying process to access articles and working with digital learning websites to provide materials for continuing education in communicable diseases.

        The EB was created by the Division of Disease Control of the Department of Health on 25 December 1984. In order to integrate disease control resources and construct new disease control system to deal with the change in patterns of communicable diseases, the Division of Disease Control was merged with the National Institute of Preventive Medicine and the National Quarantine Service to establish the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on 1 July 1999. However, the publication of EB was smoothly turned over to the CDC and was never interrupted through today. The publication of the EB is a combination of wisdom, sweat, and endeavor of enormous colleagues and is a record of cultivation and dedication of the contributors in different stages. We expect that the development of the on-line version will make it more convenient and faster for our readers to catch the needed information. We also hope that our readers would give us high level of support as they did before so that the EB could continually grow up and becomes stronger, and we sincerely welcome comments and suggestions from our readers so that the EB could more closely meet the demands of our readers.