As of 28 June, EU Member States and neighbouring countries have not reported any human cases of West Nile fever for the 2012 transmission season, states this week’s update of West Nile fever maps.
The annual meeting of the healthcare-associated infections surveillance network (HAI-Net) and of the HAI-Net coordination group took place in Stockholm on 19-21 June 2012.
With more than 32 000 cases, gonorrhoea was the second most commonly reported sexually transmitted infection (STI) in Europe in 2010. As data from the ECDC report Gonococcal antimicrobial susceptibility surveillance in Europe 2010 illustrates, gonococci have become more resistant to common agents for treatment and show reduced susceptibility to newer antibiotics. “This indicates the risk that gonorrhoea may become an untreatable disease in the near future”, stresses ECDC Director Marc Sprenger.
Following an invitation from Greek authorities, a team of experts from the ECDC Programme for HIV/AIDS, Sexually Transmitted and Blood-borne infections, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and the WHO Regional Office for Europe will visit Greece on 28 and 29 May 2012. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) will join the mission as observers.
In an expert meeting in Stockholm, identified synergies and gaps in the availability of sexual health data, programmes, initiatives and policies across Europe and possibilities for future work will be discussed.
WHO “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” is an annual campaign that makes part of major global effort to support healthcare workers to improve hand hygiene practices in healthcare settings, and thus support the prevention of often life-threatening healthcare-associated infections.
Adjustments to surveillance practices in the EU will enhance preparedness and public health response to emerging infectious diseases, thereby helping to contain human and economic costs. These are the conclusions of an article published this week in Science magazine, describing a study co-authored by ECDC.
This workshop enabled all to agree on the relevance of EPIS VPD to be used as a platform for the reporting and monitoring of measles outbreak in the EU, agree on the type of information to be reported, the nature of outbreaks to be notified and the further usage by ECDC (e.g. European Monthly Measles Monitoring1) and other Member States of data that will be shared through EPIS VPD by countries.
A meeting and a workshop on the ECDC point prevalence survey (PPS) of healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial use in acute care hospitals took take place in London on 5-6 March 2012.