With nearly 160 000 people newly diagnosed with HIV, 2017 marked another year of alarming numbers of new HIV diagnoses in the WHO European Region. In contrast, the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries reported a decline in rates of new diagnoses, mainly driven by a 20% decrease since 2015 among men who have sex with men.
Since the latest ECDC-EFSA rapid outbreak assessment published on 12 December 2017, 15 EU/EEA countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden and United Kingdom) have reported 336 confirmed, 94 probable and 3 new historical-confirmed cases associated with this ongoing multi-country outbreak of Salmonella Enteritidis in the EU/EEA.
Ready-to-eat salmon products, such as cold-smoked and marinated salmon, are the likely source of an outbreak of listeriosis that has affected Denmark, Germany and France since 2015.
Algerian health authorities reported over 160 cholera cases, with two fatalities, in five areas namely Algeirs, Bouira, Bilda, Medea and Tipaza in the northern part of the country.
Focusing on two recent public health emergencies related to tick-borne diseases in two EU countries, ECDC experts investigated the public health response and specifically the involvement of the communities.
More than half of the severe listeriosis cases in the European Union belong to clusters, many of which are not being picked up fast enough by the current surveillance system, suggests a new article published in Eurosurveillance. The large-scale study looked into listeriosis epidemiology through whole genome sequencing and found that this method, when implemented at EU-level, could lead to faster detection of multi-country outbreaks, saving up to 5 months of the investigations.
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.