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.
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.
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.
Fanny Chereau, EPIET fellow from cohort 2016, was deployed with GOARN (Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network) to support the response to the plague outbreak in Madagascar, on October 2017.
Thirteen patients with OXA-48-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae ST392 have been reported by Sweden and Norway between January and April 2018 - all returning travellers with prior hospital admission in Gran Canaria. Whole genome sequencing showed tight clustering between the bacterial isolates from the cases.
In Europe, about 80 000 hospitalised patients are estimated to have at least one healthcare-associated infection on any given day. Proper cleaning of the hands, using antiseptic fluid, remains the single most effective way for hospital staff to prevent infections that can lead to sepsis.
The rise in Europe of Candida auris infections, a difficult-to-control fungus, is of concern. The fungus spreads easily in healthcare settings, can cause invasive infections, and is also associated with resistance to multiple classes of anti-fungal medication.
Since the publication of the joint ECDC-EFSA rapid outbreak assessment on a multi-country outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes serogroup IVb, multi-locus sequence type 6 (ST 6) on 22 March 2018, three EU Member States have reported nine new confirmed outbreak cases.
The main objective of the course was to strengthen capacity in EU Member States for control of healthcare-associated infections due to multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) in acute health care settings and to promote the broadest possible implementation of appropriate methods.