Travel health includes all aspects of disease related to travel. While many of these activities fall out of ECDC’s scope, others related to the detection, verification and notification of possible communicable disease health threats are part of ECDC's mandate. ECDC experiences have proved that many of these threats are related to travel of people, either holiday makers or migratory movements. Moreover, imported communicable diseases pose a threat not only to Europeans travelling abroad but also to vulnerable, and for many diseases immunologically naïve, European population exposed to returned travellers carrying contagious disease. Although secondary cases of many imported infections in Europe remain rare given the absence of essential vectors in the life cycle of organisms and good sanitary conditions, new circumstances such as the introduction of vectors, migratory waves and intensified international travel make onward transmission of imported infections more likely, as we have seen with Chikungunya fever.

To support ECDC’s mandate to detect, verify, assess and communicate communicable diseases, which can be associated with travelling, and to provide ad hoc response to specific queries regarding potential outbreaks or trends in travel-related infections, ECDC is funding EuroTravNet. EuroTravNet is an expert network of travel and tropical medicine specialists who provide valuable expertise on clinical diagnosis of the returned traveller, and detection, identification and management of imported infections.

To prevent infectious diseases during travel by providing up to date advice on risk and risk reduction, travel health professionals need to be updated on the changing epidemiology of infectious disease risks to the traveller. ECDC through its Epidemic Intelligence activities, detects verifies, analyzes, assesses and investigates worldwide outbreaks of disease that may represent a threat to travellers and be relevant to those giving travel advice, providing up to date information. In addition, in 2010 the Eurotravnet project started to work on new tasks to support travel health advice in the EU such as developing an "information for travellers" section for ECDC disease factsheets.