The annual influenza meeting focused on new developments in influenza surveillance at the country and regional level, seasonal influenza vaccination programmes, provided an update on the global situation with regard to outbreaks of avian influenza and other emerging respiratory pathogens, and provided a forum for exchanging experiences from the past influenza season.
Influenza pandemics, whether mild, moderate or severe, affect a large proportion of the population and require a multisectoral response over several months or even years. For this reason, countries develop plans describing their strategies for responding to a pandemic supported by operational plans at national and subnational levels.
Seasonal influenza is a vaccine-preventable disease that each year infects approximately 10 to 30 % of Europe's population, and causes hundreds of thousands of hospitalisations across Europe. Vaccination is the most effective form of influenza prevention. Apart from vaccination and antiviral treatment the public health management includes personal protective measures.
In EU, only 1 in every 3 MDR TB patients has a successful treatment outcome; more than half either die, fail treatment or default (stop taking treatment). XDR TB has even worse treatment outcomes: only 1 in 4 patients finishes treatment successfully.
The European Scientific Working group on Influenza (ESWI) is a network organisation of stakeholders with a mission to reduce the burden of influenza in Europe. It holds regular conferences that have become the largest European scientific forums dedicated to influenza.
The ECDC annual meeting of the European Influenza Surveillance Network (EISN) prepared in collaboration with the EISN Coordination Committee, brought together epidemiological and virological surveillance contact points and representatives from reference laboratories from the 31 EU/EEA Member States as well as participants from EU pre-accession countries, Eastern European Neighbourhood Policy partner countries, the WHO Regional Office for Europe, and involved international institutions.