In a concerted effort to combat healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the Belgian EU Presidency on 6-7 May co-hosted a conference at the national public health institute of Belgium, Sciensano, in Brussels.
On 26 July ECDC published the Rapid Risk Assessment COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care facilities in the EU/EEA in the context of current vaccine coverage, following several outbreaks that occurred in these settings during the past six months in several EU/EEA countries, resulting in some cases of severe disease and deaths.
This e-learning course is designed for front-line managers of institutions hosting or serving people who are medially or socially vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19. It is a non-moderated and self-paced course. You can decide when to start it, interrupt and resume to continue at any time. In total, the course is designed to take from 1 to 3 hours to complete. The content of this course is available in all 24 EU official working languages.
On European Antibiotic Awareness Day, ECDC publishes the results of two point-prevalence surveys of healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial use in hospitals and in long-term care facilities in the EU/EEA.
ECDC will start monitoring disease distribution in the EU and collecting EU data through the epidemiological surveillance network comprising the European Commission, ECDC and national authorities for epidemiological surveillance.
The survey results show more frequent detections and geographical dispersion of LA-MRSA in humans in the EU/EEA since 2007, and highlight the public health and veterinary importance of LA-MRSA as a ‘One Health’ issue. The ECDC advocates for periodic systematic surveys or integrated multi-sectorial surveillance to facilitate control measures.
An EU-wide survey estimated that 4.2 million healthcare-associated infections occur every year in European long-term care facilities, compared to an estimated 3.5 million occurring in European acute care hospitals, and that on any given day, over 116 400 residents have at least one active healthcare-associated infection. Pete Kinross, an expert in surveillance of healthcare-associated infections at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), speaks about these findings during a session on antimicrobial resistance in these healthcare settings, at ECCMID 2017.
A study published today by PLOS Medicine, estimates the combined burden of six healthcare-associated infections as being higher than that of diseases such as influenza, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis together.
Antimicrobial resistance represent a serious threat to public health and patient safety and is a worldwide problem. Each year, in the European Union (EU) at least 25 000 patients die of infections with multidrug-resistant bacteria.