Better estimates of infectious disease burden are needed for effective planning and prioritising of limited public health resources. These are the conclusions of an article published this week in PLoS Medicine describing a study, funded and co-authored by ECDC.

The Burden of Communicable Diseases in Europe (BCoDE) study uses a pathogen-based incidence approach to generate infectious disease burden estimates in Europe, taking into account all chronic and long-term sequelae that can be causally related to an infectious agent. The authors of the study at the Centre for Infectious Disease Control (RIVM) in Bilthoven, the Netherlands, found that this methodology has the advantage of consistently attributing the burden to its infectious cause.

The findings of the study indicate the need for further research in this area and identify future challenges, including the integration of demographic changes and infection dynamics into the methodology for estimating the burden of infectious diseases.

Read the full article: 'New Methodology for Estimating the Burden of Infectious Diseases in Europe'