🏥 bag-health-mcp

Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio — connecting AI models to Swiss public data sources.

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

MCP server for the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) Infectious Disease Dashboard (IDD). Access epidemiological surveillance data for 51 pathogens across Switzerland — including influenza, COVID-19, measles, wastewater surveillance, and more.

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🎯 What You Can Do

"Wie ist die aktuelle Grippesituation im Kanton Zürich verglichen mit den letzten Wochen?"
→ bag_health_mcp__get_canton_situation(canton="ZH")

"Gibt es aktuell einen Masernausbruch in der Schweiz?"
→ bag_health_mcp__get_disease_data(series_id="measles/cases/incValue/year", canton="all")

"Wie entwickelt sich das SARS-CoV-2-Signal im Abwasser?"
→ bag_health_mcp__list_series(topic="wastewater_viral_load")
→ bag_health_mcp__get_disease_data(series_id="wastewater_viral_load/NA/value/date", ...)

"Welche Krankheitsdaten stellt das BAG aktuell bereit?"
→ bag_health_mcp__list_diseases()
→ More use cases by audience →

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🔧 Tools

Tool	Description
bag_health_mcp__list_diseases	List all 51 disease topics, grouped by category
bag_health_mcp__list_series	List data series for a specific disease
bag_health_mcp__get_series_details	Get available filter dimensions (canton, age, sex)
bag_health_mcp__get_disease_data	Fetch time-series surveillance data
bag_health_mcp__get_canton_situation	Situational overview for a canton (Schulamt use case)
bag_health_mcp__list_export_files	List available complete export datasets
bag_health_mcp__download_export	Download raw CSV/JSON export
bag_health_mcp__get_data_version	Current data version (updated every Wednesday)

Tool annotations

All tools carry MCP tool annotations so a host can reason about them without calling. Every tool is identical here — it only ever reads from the public BAG IDD API:

Annotation	Value	Meaning
readOnlyHint	true	No tool mutates any state.
destructiveHint	false	No destructive side effects.
idempotentHint	true	Repeating a call has no additional effect.
openWorldHint	true	Tools reach an external system (the IDD API).

A host may therefore treat all calls as safe, cacheable reads. The values are declared once as READ_ONLY in server.py and applied to all 8 tools.

🧩 MCP Primitives

This server uses all three MCP primitives, each for what it is best at:

Tools (8) — live, parameterised actions that call the IDD API (above).

Resources — static, read-only reference data a host can fetch and cache, no arguments or upstream call needed:

Resource URI	Description
bag://reference/cantons	Canton codes accepted by the tools (incl. FL, all)
bag://reference/disease-categories	Disease-topic taxonomy by category
bag://reference/data-licence	Source, attribution and licence terms

Prompts — reusable, parameterised workflows a host can surface (e.g. as slash-commands):

Prompt	Arguments	Purpose
canton_situation_brief	canton	Draft a Schulamt public-health situation brief
outbreak_check	disease, canton	Check whether a disease is currently elevated

Live surveillance data stays behind Tools (it is parameterised and changes weekly); fixed reference data is exposed as Resources; recommended multi-tool workflows are packaged as Prompts.

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🏫 Relevance for Schools & City Administration

Schulamt / Kreisschulbehörden:

• Monitor influenza and ARI incidence in your canton
• Single measles case → alert for schools with low vaccination coverage
• Pertussis tracking → protect unvaccinated infants (siblings of school children)

Stadtverwaltung / KI-Fachgruppe:

• Public Health Reporting with structured weekly data
• Wastewater surveillance as 1-week lead indicator before clinical cases

Synergy with portfolio:

• bag-epl-mcp → "What treatments are listed?" (EPL medication database)
• bag-health-mcp → "What is currently spreading?" (surveillance data)

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📡 Data Source

• IDD API: https://api.idd.bag.admin.ch — No authentication required
• Update cycle: Every Wednesday
• Coverage: Switzerland + Liechtenstein (FL), 26 cantons
• Topics: 51 pathogens, 1386 data series

Datenquellen & Lizenzen / Data sources & licences

Source	Provider	Licence	Attribution required
Infectious Disease Dashboard (IDD)	Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH / BAG)	opendata.swiss Open Government Data — free use, source attribution required (Swiss OGD terms, CC BY-equivalent)	Yes

Required citation: Federal Office of Public Health FOPH — Infectious Disease Dashboard (IDD), open data via opendata.swiss. Every tool response carries this in a provenance block (attribution + license fields) so downstream consumers can surface it automatically.

Architecture:
                    ┌─────────────────┐
  MCP Host          │  bag-health-mcp │
  (Claude, etc.) ──▶│  MCP SDK        │──▶ api.idd.bag.admin.ch
                    │  8 Tools        │    (IDD API, no auth)
                    └─────────────────┘

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🚀 Installation

Claude Desktop (stdio)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bag-health": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["bag-health-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Cloud / HTTP

pip install bag-health-mcp
python -m bag_health_mcp.server --http --port 8000

Transport, host and port are set via environment variables — MCP_TRANSPORT (http/stdio), MCP_HOST, MCP_PORT — which is the recommended way for deployments (the --http flag still works for local use). The server binds to 127.0.0.1 by default so a local HTTP server is not exposed to the network. Container/cloud deployments bind all interfaces by setting MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 explicitly — the provided Dockerfile does this.

⚠️ Security: HTTP transport exposes the server on the network. Only bind beyond 127.0.0.1 in a network-isolated environment — never directly on a public/shared network. Binding to a non-localhost host logs a warning at startup. The default stdio transport has no network surface. See docs/security-posture.md.

HTTP auth (optional): set MCP_AUTH_TOKEN to require Authorization: Bearer <token> on every HTTP request (401 otherwise). Unset = no auth (fine for stdio/local). This gates who may invoke the server; for real user identity, front it with a gateway.

CORS (browser clients): set MCP_CORS_ORIGINS to a comma-separated origin allow-list to enable cross-origin browser access; the Mcp-Session-Id header is exposed so stateful sessions work. Empty = no cross-origin (never a wildcard).

For running at scale (session affinity, resource limits, MCP gateway), see the deployment & scaling guide and the reference manifests in deploy/.

Logging: the server emits structured JSON logs (one object per line, with an RFC 5424 severity) to stderr — stdout is reserved for the stdio JSON-RPC transport. Set the level with MCP_LOG_LEVEL (default INFO).

Tracing (optional): install the telemetry extra and point the server at an OTLP collector to get OpenTelemetry spans per tool-call plus instrumented outbound HTTP:

pip install "bag-health-mcp[telemetry]"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="http://otel-collector:4318"
# optional: OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=bag-health-mcp

Tracing is a no-op unless both the extra is installed and an OTEL_* endpoint is set. Spans carry only the tool name and (on error) the exception class — never tool arguments, cantons or surveillance data.

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🗂️ Available Disease Topics

Category	Topics
Respiratory	influenza, covid19, acute_respiratory_infection, respiratory_pathogens
Enteric	campylobacteriosis, salmonellosis, ehec, listeriosis, hepatitis_a/e
STI & Bloodborne	hiv, aids, syphilis, gonorrhea, hepatitis_b/c, chlamydiosis
Vaccine-preventable	measles, pertussis, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, ipd, meningo
Vector-borne	lyme_borreliosis, tick-borne_encephalitis, dengue, malaria, zika
Wastewater	wastewater_viral_load, wastewater_sequencing

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🖼️ Demo

Claude asking about the influenza situation in canton Zurich — single tool call, structured result, actionable German-language summary.

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🔒 Safety & Limits

Aspect	Details
Access	Read-only — no write operations possible
Egress	Code-layer allow-list: the server only contacts the BAG IDD API, HTTPS-only, enforced on every request incl. redirect hops (SSRF/SEC-004 + SEC-021). Network-layer companion policy in deploy/networkpolicy.yaml
Personal data	None — BAG IDD data is aggregated and anonymised at canton level by law
Rate limits	No published IDD API rate limit; server caps responses at 104 data points per call by default (limit_weeks param)
Timeout	30 s per API call
Authentication	No API keys required — all data publicly accessible
Data licence	opendata.swiss OGD — free use, source attribution required (CC BY-equivalent). FOPH IDD must be cited; see Data sources & licences
Terms of Service	Subject to BAG IDD API ToS

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⚠️ Known Limitations

• Beta API: IDD API is labelled v0.1 beta — schema may change without notice
• Weekly cadence: Data is not real-time; updated Wednesdays only
• Canton granularity: Some rare diseases have insufficient cases for canton-level data (suppressed for privacy)
• Age groups: Available dimensions vary by disease series; use bag_health_mcp__get_series_details to check

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🇨🇭 Compliance

• ISDS (Stadt Zürich): a draft information-security protection-needs classification (Schutzbedarfsanalyse per Grundwert + measures mapping) is in docs/isds-klassifikation.md. It is a technically-grounded draft pending ISBO/OIZ sign-off — not a binding classification.
• Data classification (Schulamt): the data is classified ÖFFENTLICH / BUI (public OGD, no personal data, aggregated at canton level with small cells suppressed at source). Draft scheme + aggregation-risk note in docs/datenklassifikation-schulamt.md; the aggregating bag_health_mcp__get_canton_situation tool surfaces this in its response.
• Security posture: lethal-trifecta assessment (the server is strictly read-only → not affected), secret-management decision (no secrets — public data), and network-exposure notes are in docs/security-posture.md.
• Phase architecture: this is a Phase 1 (read-only) server; write/send capabilities are deferred behind documented prerequisites. See docs/roadmap.md.
• Reporting vulnerabilities: see the security policy for how to report security issues privately.

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📄 License

Code: MIT (see LICENSE).

Data: BAG IDD is Open Government Data on opendata.swiss under free use with mandatory source attribution (Swiss OGD terms, CC BY-equivalent) — not public domain. Cite the Federal Office of Public Health FOPH (IDD) when reusing the data; see Data sources & licences.

🔗 Related Portfolio Servers

• swiss-statistics-mcp — BFS demographic data
• bag-epl-mcp — BAG medication reimbursement list
• zurich-opendata-mcp — City of Zurich open data

Installation

Run via uv's uvx — no clone or manual install needed. Add to your MCP client config (mcpServers for Claude Desktop, Cursor and Windsurf; use a top-level servers key for VS Code in .vscode/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bag-health-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "bag-health-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}