[Establishment and preliminary evaluation of the General Practitioners' Morbidity Sentinel Stations Program in Hungary. Prevalence of XXXX , @entity6 and @entity1575 ].

@entity1 @entity101 @entity6 @entity5 @entity1575 @entity65
STUDY OBJECTIVE: To develop, introduce and test a methodology, which provides valid data about the prevalence and incidence of chronic, non-communicable diseases of great public health importance. DESIGN: The School of Public Health, University of Debrecen, Hungary and the National Public Health and Medical Officer Service the first time launched a morbidity sentinel stations network of general practitioners in four counties in Hungary in May 1998. Within the framework of this program the participating general practitioners reported the prevalence data of @entity65 , @entity6 , @entity1575 , and major @entity5 at the beginning, and from than on continuously report the incidence of these diseases. The authors built quality assurance into the program at different levels in order to ensure high quality data. @entity1 : The study population consists of @entity1 belonging to the participating general practitioners' practices at any time, selected in a way to represent the eastern and western part of the country as well as the participating practices in the counties (Gy  r-Moson-Sopron, Hajd  -Bihar, Szabolcs-Szatm  r-Bereg, Zala) would give a geographically and according to settlement size representative sample of general practitioners in those counties. Eighty general practitioners were approached in the four counties by the county offices and overall 73 of them, 1.4% of the total practices in Hungary (5212), agreed to participate in the study, therefore information can be collected on 1.37% of the Hungarian population's (138,088 @entity1 ) morbidity status. MAIN RESULTS: The population of practices participating in the program gives a representative sample of the counties population by age and sex. The prevalence of @entity101 , @entity6 and @entity1575 is high in all the counties involved. In most of the selected diseases the authors have found differences in the prevalence between the eastern and western part of Hungary with higher values in the western counties. The differences were most apparent in the older age groups in both sexes. CONCLUSIONS: The development and sustainability of primary care based, sentinel stations type, euroconform morbidity data collection system is undoubtedly justified in Hungary. The collected and thoroughly analysed data provide not only a valid and comprehensive basis to describe some aspects of the health status of the Hungarian population but also gives an opportunity to continuously monitor the changes in morbidity of the selected diseases. Thus, the program serves an important basis for health care capacity building, priority setting and the evaluation of the effectiveness of public health interventions.
