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.
The 2015 meeting of the Joint ECDC/WHO Surveillance Network for Tuberculosis was held in The Hague, the Netherlands, on 26-27 May 2015. The meeting was organised jointly by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and WHO/Europe for TB surveillance experts from WHO European region including European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) Member States (MSs). The participants included 47 nominated contact points for TB surveillance from 42 countries, as well as experts from ECDC and WHO/Europe, WHO headquarters and country offices. In addition, experts from seven EU Enlargement Countries and from the KNCV TB Foundation (the Netherlands) attended the meeting as observers.
On 3 December 2015, ECDC hosts a technical meeting to discuss influenza vaccine effectiveness studies and how they can best meet public health needs as well as regulatory requirements.