Invasive pneumococcal disease in Victoria: a better measurement of the true incidence.

Invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) notifications are used 10 monitor IPD vaccination programmes. We conducted sequential deterministic data-linkage between IPD notifications and hospitarization data in Victoria, Australia, in order to determine whether all diagnosed cases were being reported. The proportion of each relevant hospital admission lCD-10-AM code that could be linked to notified cases was calculated. Total and age-specific annual rates were calculated and compared for notified and non-notified cases. Total incidence was estimated using data-linkage results and application of a two-source capture-recapture method. The first 2 years of IPD surveillance in Victoria missed at least one-sixth of laboratory-confirmed IPD cases. Estimated annual IPD rate increased from 9•0 to 10/100000 and rose even higher, to 11•5/100000, with age-specific rates possibly reaching 90.0/100000 children age