Viral Map of Lebanon

The Viral Map of Lebanon is the national spatial platform for Lebanon's participation in the Global Influenza Hospital Surveillance Network (GIHSN), an international surveillance system collecting standardized epidemiologic and clinical data from hospitalized patients with severe acute respiratory infections across 28 sites and 113 hospitals in 24 countries for the 2024-2025 season. The platform visualizes and communicates the outputs of a hospital-based surveillance system led by the Center for Infectious Diseases Research (CIDR) at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC), which has coordinated Lebanon's GIHSN activities since 2019. Findings on circulating viruses are shared with national public health authorities, the World Health Organization, and the broader scientific community.

The Lebanese surveillance system collects standardized demographic, clinical, and laboratory data from patients of all age groups hospitalized due to possible respiratory viral infection across a geographically distributed sentinel network. Participating hospitals span all major governorates: AUBMC, Rafic Hariri University Hospital, Al Zahraa Hospital University Medical Center, and Makassed General Hospital from Beirut; Keserwan Medical Center from Mount Lebanon; New Mazloum Hospital from North Lebanon; Hammoud Hospital University Medical Center from South Lebanon; and Bekaa Hospital from the Bekaa. This geographic distribution constitutes Lebanon's sentinel surveillance network within GIHSN, ensuring national coverage across demographically and epidemiologically distinct regions.

The platform's spatial architecture transforms this distributed data collection into a navigable and analytically coherent national record. By mapping surveillance activity and findings across the sentinel network, it supports evidence-based public health decision-making, strengthens regional and global influenza surveillance efforts, and enhances local capacity for molecular testing and genomic analysis in alignment with collaboration frameworks between GIHSN and the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS).