Background: Public health surveillance is the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data regarding a health-related event for use in public health action to reduce morbidity and mortality and to improve health. PHEM is implemented in most of the regions to strengthen the surveillance and early warning system for public health emergencies and events. However, the performance of core surveillance activities and quality of the system is not yet assessed very well. Therefore, this study is intended to evaluate surveillance system in South Gondar zone mainly focusing on measles surveillance activities.

Objective: To evaluate the surveillance system of measles in South Gondar zone, Northwest part of Ethiopia, 2019.

Method: Descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in South Gondar zone, Amhara region from April 03-18, 2019. One zonal health office, 2 woredas, 4 health centers and 4 health posts were included in the study. South Gondar zone and 2 woredas of the zone were selected purposively and health facilities were selected by simple random sampling. Measles disease was selected purposively to be included in the system evaluation. WHO standard checklist for surveillance system evaluation was adopted for data collection.

Result: A total of 173 suspected measles cases were reported from woredas, hospitals and town administrations in the year 2011 EFY in the South Gondar zone, and 65 suspected measles cases were reported from those respondent woredas 10 and 55 cases from Farta and Simada woredas respectively. The system was also found flexible with ability to accommodate other diseases. The health professionals were detecting any suspected cases of measles using the case definition. Except one health center blood sample for measles was collected at all visited health centers. All visited health posts had no updated PHEM guideline and among 11 participants,2 (18%) health facility did not report according to the guideline. All respondents agreed upon the surveillance system is easy to use for case detection and filling the data and on average it takes 10-15 minutes to fill their reports. Among 11 health facilities, the zonal department and the two Woreda offices conduct data analysis and interpretation, but some HCs and all HPs did not perform data analysis. The majority of respondents agreed that reporting agents accept and well engaged to the surveillance activities.

Conclusion and recommendation: The surveillance system was found to be useful, acceptable, simple, and flexible however the system fails to be representative enough and also has a problem in data quality. The main public health problems of South Gondar zone were measles, scabies and malaria. Concerning to report forms and guidelines, most HFs have no recently updated guidelines PHEM, measles and scabies guidelines. Even though woredas and zonal health facilities perform data analysis, it was not satisfactory as intended for action. So, surveillance data should be analyzed, interpreted and used for decision making at all facility levels.

KEY WORDS: Measles, Surveillance system, South Gondar zone