Surveillance means collecting data for action. Local, cantonal and federal actors are critical partners in disease control. There is evidence that the quality of notifications should continuously be improved. The retrieval of missing information increases the workload of the system of notification at all levels and slows down the response. By law, the diagnosing physician and the head of the laboratory are responsible for the transmission of data to the FOPH, while the cantonal health authority oversees their quality. The law on epidemics doesn't leave it up to physicians and laboratories whether to notify or not: notification is mandatory and sanctions are foreseen in the law against violators. However, the quality of the reporting system would preferably remain a matter of professionalism rather than coercion.

the Swiss Society of Internal Medicine and the Swiss Respiratory Society Supported by the FMH (Swiss Medical Association) and by Schwabe AG, the long-established scientific publishing house founded in 1488 Editores Medicorum Helveticorum S w i s s M e d i c a l W e e k l y E s t a b l i s h e d i n 1 8 7 1 F o r m e r l y : S c h w e i ze r i s c h e M e d i z i n i s c h e W o c h e n s c h r i f t

In recent years it has become evident that screening for and treatment of acute toxoplasmosis during pregnancy may have no measurable impact on vertical transmission and neonatal morbidity and mortality. A broad lack of evidence with regard to many aspects of congenital toxoplasmosis has been recognised in a common European initiative (EUROTOXO) which reviewed several thousand published papers on the subject of toxoplasmosis during pregnancy and childhood. It was therefore clear that the strategies currently implemented in our country would, on closer inspection, no longer withstand the claim for evidence-based procedures. The arguments and call for a change of paradigm in Switzerland which follow here are the result of a national consensus-finding process involving experts from various specialities, including gynaecology/obstetrics, paediatrics/neonatology, infectiology, ophthalmology and laboratory medicine, together with representatives of the public health authorities.