Today, the impact of vaccines on Public Health is at the centre of the discussions in the conference organised by the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) in Prague. This conference brought together experts to debate the many-sided correlations between vaccines, medicine and society at the dawn of the third millennium.
This paper serves as a gateway review of several field and epidemiological investigations conducted across the United States (US) which have been compiled as a special supplement in a January 2011 number of the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal.
The first annual meeting of the European hepatitis B and C surveillance network takes place on 23-24 March 2011. Since 2009, ECDC has worked on preparing the enhanced surveillance of hepatitis B and C at EU/EEA level by establishing a network for hepatitis B and C surveillance and by carrying out a survey on prevention and surveillance activities in the Member States.
ECDC and EFSA have just launched the annual report on zoonoses and food-borne outbreaks in the European Union for 2009. The report shows that Salmonella cases in humans fell by 17% in 2009, marking a decrease for the fifth consecutive year
A new report, Tuberculosis surveillance in Europe 2009, a joint publication from ECDC and the WHO Regional Office for Europe to mark World Tuberculosis Day 2011, provides evidence for concern about the spread of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) and the persistence of TB among children.
First annual meeting of the network since it was transferred to ECDC in March 2010. Among the objectives of the meeting is to to present the epidemiological situation of diphtheria in Europe for 2009.
Between 19 January and 17 February 2011, 10 cases of measles (eight laboratory-confirmed and two probable) were reported in Oslo, with the majority of cases in a mainly unvaccinated Somali community.
While there have been some early descriptive reports of school outbreaks, for example a number published in Eurosurveillance from France and the UK this study is unusual in combining modelling, social network theory and ‘shoe-leather epidemiology’.