Tracking contagious disease in France

The website for Le Quotidien du Medecin included maps showing the distribution of flu cases for the 8th week of 2011. The “surface trend" map gives a sense of the regional prevalence of cases. These maps are updated weekly on "sentiweb"

The web site is a collaboration between general pracitioners and researchers in France

It is made up of a "Réseau Sentinelles," a network of 1300 volunteer primary care physicians “médecins généralistes”, or general practitioners, working throughout the metropolitan regions of France (2% of the total general practitioners in these regions). Its goal is to provide clinical surveillance in France for 10 health indicators. Each member doctor is known as a “médecin Sentinelles” (or “Sentinelles doctor”). The network was created in November 1984 by Professor Alain-Jacques Valleron, and is regulated under the auspices of the research unit "U 707" of INSERM (the French NIH) and the University of Paris VI: Pierre and Marie Curie.

The site also includes a map showing a very high recent prevalence of diarrhea that occurred in the first week of January. Over 580,000 cases were rerported.