The Protocol is targeted at the national public health reference laboratories to guide the susceptibility testing needed for EU surveillance and the reporting to ECDC.
These report presents the results of the EQA on antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) for national public health laboratories for Campylobacter within the Food‐ and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses Network (FWD-Net).
This report presents the results of the fourth round of the EQA on antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) for national public health laboratories for Campylobacter (Campylobacter EQA4-AST) within the Food‐ and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses Network (FWD-Net). The objectives of this EQA4-AST were to determine the accuracy of quantitative AST results reported by participants; to identify common laboratory problems related to the guidance in the EU protocol, and to assess the overall comparability of routinely collected AST data from national public health reference laboratories across Europe.
This report presents the results of the eighth round of the external quality assessment (EQA-8) scheme for typing of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) organised for laboratories providing data to the Food- and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses Network (FWD-Net) managed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
The data on antimicrobial resistance in zoonotic and indicator bacteria in 2017, submitted by 28 EU Member States (MSs), were jointly analysed by EFSA and ECDC. Resistance in zoonotic Salmonella and Campylobacter from humans, animals and food, and resistance in indicator Escherichia coli as well as meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in animals and food were addressed, and temporal trends assessed.
The seroincidence calculator utilises the combination of serum antibody levels (lgG, lgM, and lgA) at a given point in time to estimate the time since seroconversion, which in turn gives an estimate of annual 'force of infection' in the tested population.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control was asked by the European Commission to assess the risk involved in changing the testing requirements for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and hepatitis C virus (HCV) with regard to the quality and safety of non-partner semen donations.
In order to explore whether the current capacity for EU/EEA-wide molecular characterisation for surveillance of HBV and HCV is sufficient to be feasible and what gaps need to be addressed, a survey of EU/EEA Member States was conducted to assess their laboratory capacity and needs in relation to the molecular characterisation of hepatitis B and C.