An ECDC expert was in Zambia from 25 March to support in the response to the recent cholera outbreak as part of and funded by the ‘ECDC for Africa CDC’ project.
On this episode we are joined by Otilia Mårdh, Medical Epidemiologist at ECDC, to discuss the latest reports on sexually transmitted infections in Europe.
Despite good access to effective antibiotics, Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococci) is still a major cause of disease and death in both developing and developed countries. Pneumococci are the main cause of bacterial respiratory tract infections, such as pneumonia, middle ear infection, and sinusitis, in all age groups.
Yellow fever (YF) is a mosquito-borne infection, distributed in west, central and east Africa and in South America. The disease can cause a wide spectrum of symptoms, from mild to fatal. In severe cases there may be spontaneous haemorrhage. Mortality of these clinical cases can be as high as 80%, on a par with Ebola, Marburg and other haemorrhagic viral infections.
This report provides an analysis of the external quality assessment (EQA) for the antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) performance of laboratories participating in the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network (EARS-Net) in 2019. A total of 952 laboratories (1–95 per country) from 30 EU/EEA countries participated in the EQA exercise.
This issue of the ECDC Communicable Disease Threats Report (CDTR) covers the period 15-21 December 2019 and includes updates on Ebola virus disease, dengue, chikungunya, influenza, cholera, and polio.