The newly redesigned portal of the European Centre for Infectious Disease Control (ECDC) is now online.
The portal aims to provide more information on ECDC's activities to a broader audience including general public, governmental expert agencies, decision makers and journalists.
Increased focus on infectious diseases and other topics
Improving users’ access to information on infection diseases is one of the portal’s main goal. ECDC offers a selection of health topics that are presented in the Top Six Health Topics on the front page. The web team is regularly renewing this selection based on ECDC’s work and actuality in the field of infectious diseases. The dynamic A-Z index in the Health Topics section allows a search by alphabetic order or by categories (diseases and conditions, other topics and pathogens).
New Country Information session
Providing information on the Member States is a completely new section created with the portal. On the front page, an interactive map allows users to select the country of their choice. The Country Information section provides information on the health policy and the healthcare system in the Member States as well as the EEA/EFTA countries. External links permit to easily visit websites from national ministries or institutions.
Improved accessibility to ECDC’s website network
Furthermore the portal increase the accessibility to websites recently incorporated or created by ECDC. In fact a number of websites (e.g. EPIET, Disease Specific Network such as the European Influenza Surveillance Network, ESCAIDE websites) are now part of ECDC’s website network. Links to these websites are available from a scrolling box on the top of the front page. Other websites will be added in the future.
Dedicated answer to pandemic (H1N1) 2009
Since the start of the pandemic, a dedicated page has proved a crucial tool to keep public health specialists, journalists and the general public updated with the latest developments of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009. In this regards, the ECDC’s Daily Update, posted every day, is one of the key documents developed by ECDC.
Documents of interest for each audience are developed and posted on this page under different subcategories. Specific tools have been developed to meet with some demand, such as a Virtual Press Room specially dedicated to inform European journalists.
More to come
At a later stage this year ECDC intends to separately launch each of the 25 language versions. ECDC portal is intended to become ECDC main communication tool for the inner circles as well as for the general public.