Applied epidemiology of influenza and other respiratory infections in Australia, Bangladesh and Cambodia

This thesis documents the work I completed to fulfil the core requirements of the Master of Philosophy in Applied Epidemiology (MAE) while based at the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne. In May 2017 I travelled to Cambodia to conduct an influenza burden of disease study. I worked in collaboration with Cambodian public health officials and WHO Country Office staff to assist in the estimation of a national hospitalisation rate due to influenza-associated severe acute respiratory infection (SARI). The numerator used in the calculation of rates relied on existing surveillance data. Substantial field work was required to estimate the denominator. Field work entailed conducting two hospital admission surveys in two geographical regions in Cambodia. The results of this study showed that annual rates of influenza-associated hospitalisations were highest in infants and young children (