Nearly one in three foodborne outbreaks in the EU in 2018 were caused by Salmonella. This is one of the main findings of the annual report on trends and sources of zoonoses published today by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Within one week, Latvia, Spain and Italy each notified a case of imported rabies. Earlier in the year, Norway had reported an additional travel-related case. Travellers to countries where rabies is enzootic should follow basic preventive measures.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one EU/EEA country (Romania) and two neighbouring countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ukraine) remain at high risk of a sustained polio outbreak partly due to insufficient vaccination coverage.

The new ECDC organisational structure will take effect from January 2020.

This estimate on the “PrEP gap” in Europe was published in a paper in Eurosurveillance stating that 500 000 men who have sex with men in the European Union currently cannot access HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), despite being very likely to use it.

Two out of the four drugs tested in a multi-drug randomised control trial have been found more effective in treating Ebola, the World Health Organization announced on Monday. The Data and Safety Monitoring Board, an independent body that has been reviewing interim safety and efficacy data, has therefore recommended that the study be stopped and that all future patients be randomized to receive either REGN-EB3 or mAb114, in what is being considered an extension phase of the study.

Dutch health authorities have recently reported an increase of hepatitis A infections particularly affecting men who have sex with men. With the on-going Pride events across Europe, ECDC stresses the importance of ensuring hepatitis A vaccination, (advice for) safer sex and personal hygiene practices including washing hands and genital areas before and after sex to avoid infection.

The recommendation from ECDC follows reports of falsified rabies vaccines and anti-rabies serum circulating in the Philippines and is aimed at travellers who have received the vaccine or serum after possible exposure to rabies.

Targeted testing is an essential element of any strategy to eliminate viral hepatitis across the countries in the European Union and European Economic Area. Some preliminary monitoring results on the response to hepatitis B and C presented around World Hepatitis Day show that diagnosing chronic infections is still a challenge in the EU/EEA.

After the Ebola virus disease outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 17 July 2019, ECDC updated its risk assessment for the EU/EEA on the on-going outbreak: the overall risk of introduction and further spread of the Ebola virus within the EU/EEA remains very low.