Sciensano coordinates different surveillance networks and research projects related to mortality surveillance in Belgium, and offers various statistics of mortality.
Be-MOMO — Surveillance of all-cause mortality in Belgium
Sciensano’s Epidemiology of infectious diseases service monitors all-cause excess mortality in Belgium on a weekly basis. The mortality monitoring model is designed to serve as a tool for rapid detection and quantification of unusual mortality which might result from disease epidemics such as influenza or from extreme environmental conditions such as heat waves.
SPMA — Standardized Procedures of Mortality Analysis
The Lifestyle and chronic diseases service develops the “Standardized Procedures for Mortality Analysis (SPMA)” web application. SPMA allows scientific researchers and public health policy makers to analyse Belgian population, birth and death statistics (so called ‘vital statistics’) by year in an interactive and user-friendly way. SPMA aims at optimising access to existing sources of health information in order to measure and follow-up the health status of the Belgian population.
HEASP – Health, Environment and Susceptible populations project
The Health, Environment and Susceptible populations (HEASP) project is carried out by the Risk and health impact assessment service of Sciensano. The HEASP project aims to identify individual factors that modify the association between mortality and environmental exposures, in Belgium.
COVID-19 mortality surveillance
The Epidemiology of infectious diseases service carries out epidemiological surveillance of COVID-19 mortality. The surveillance was put into place at the start of the epidemic to acquire real-time COVID-19 mortality data. It relied on surveillances in hospitals, nursing homes and among general practitioners to collect data on COVID-19 deaths, whether confirmed by laboratory test, radiologically confirmed by chest CT scan, or diagnosed on the basis of clinical presentation.
In collaboration with health authorities, Sciensano collects, verifies, validates and consolidates these data at the national level and ensures the analysis and publication of the COVID-19 related deaths.
Epidemiological surveillance of COVID-19 mortality | sciensano.be
LINK-VACC — Linking of registers for COVID-19 vaccine surveillance
The Epidemiology of infectious diseases service conducts the “Linking of registers for COVID-19 vaccine surveillance (LINK-VACC )” project. This project ran in parallel with the roll-out of the Belgian COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Its objective is to monitor what percentage of the population (and of certain target groups) has already been vaccinated. It also allows to continuously monitor the vaccine’s effectiveness and to follow up on vaccine safety (in support of FAGG-AFMPS). With this project, Sciensano contributes to the so called post-authorization surveillance of the COVID-19 vaccines.
HELICON — Unravelling the long-term and indirect health impact of the COVID-19 crisis in Belgium
The HELICON project intends to unravel the long-term and indirect health impact of the COVID-19 crisis in Belgium. It aims to fulfil three research objectives:
- Identify socio-economic and sociodemographic factors of risk and resilience through the assessment of the social patterning of COVID-19 testing, infection, hospitalizations and mortality.
- Describe the medium- and long-term direct health impact of COVID-19 infections with regard to healthcare use after COVID hospitalization.
- Assess the indirect health impact of the COVID-19 crisis in terms of non-COVID morbidity and mortality and the health economic impact of delayed health care use.