Background A national Family Violence Surveillance System (FaViSS) was established in Costa Rica since 2005, in all the public Clinics and Hospitals, with the mandatory report of any kind of family violence that included sexual, psychological or physical abuse and neglect syndrome. The objective was describe the Family Violence (FaVi) trend during the last 5 years of the national surveillance system in Costa Rica.

Methods The standardised surveillance protocol was developed to collect the data from the public Clinics and Hospitals in Costa Rica. We merged and analysed the country's data between 2006 and 2011. The estimated the incidence rate of every kind of FaVi, by age group, gender, year, geographical and temporal distribution.

Results During the analysed period 53 061 cases of FaVi were reported in all the country. The overall FaVi's affected gender was female that reached 79.4% and the younger and elderly population. According with the each FaVi's category, physical abuse was reported in 46.6% of the cases followed by psychological abuse in 28.4%. The FaVi's temporal analysis evidenced that overall FaVi cases were more frequent during the first trimester of each year with a reduction during the last trimester.

Discussion The Costa Rican FaViSS has permitted knows the behavior in the country of one of the most important public health events and it gave important information to the policy makers.

Contribution to the Field The current analysis evidenced how the FaViSS could improve the knowledge of the event to enforcement the prevention programs in the country.