Heilbrigðisskýrslur - 01.12.1980, Page 131

THE VALUE OF HEILBRIGÐISSKÝRSLUR FOR INTERNATIONAL
EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDIES:
MEASLES IN ICELAND, 1896 - 1974
Andrew Cliff and Peter Haggett
(University of Cambridge, England and University of
Bristol, England)
Introduction
In the volumes of Heilbrigðisskýrslur, Iceland possesses one of the
richest historical records of epidemiological events in the world.
While no disease statistics are complete and some cases will always
be unreported, the Icelandic records are unique in terms of the
unbroken length of the record, the range of infectious diseases
covered, and the geographical detail for which figures are given.
In the earlier decades, too, the inclusion of summary comments by
the physicians in charge of a particular medical district add to our
understanding of the local characteristics of particular outbreaks.
It was the high quality of these data by international standards which
led a small English team of one statistician and three medical
geopgraphers to choose Iceland for the study of the spread of one
infectious disease (measles) at the local level. Their preliminary
findings have been reported in the form of a 238-page book published
by Cambridge University press (Cliff, et al., 1981), and this brief
paper presents a few of the empirical results. For the more theoretical
work and the mathematical models used, readers are referred to Chapters
2, 6 and 7 of the book.
Note: To avoid repetition of læknishérað, names of medical districts
are given throughout as the stem of the origin. We have thus followed
the convention used in Heilbrigðisskýrslur.
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