This report provides an analysis of the external quality assessment (EQA) for the antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) performance of laboratories participating in the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network (EARS-Net) in 2019. A total of 952 laboratories (1–95 per country) from 30 EU/EEA countries participated in the EQA exercise.
This gap analysis demonstrated that there are significant gaps in diphtheria diagnostic capacity within the EU/EEA, with only six Member States fulfilling the minimum criteria in terms of surveillance, specialised laboratory diagnostics and expertise.
ECDC encourages adoption of EU and ISO quality standards for diagnostic and reference laboratory services by its partners in EU laboratory networks and in line with national arrangements and regulations.
In July 2014, a panel of three strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae and two simulated samples of cerebrospinal fluid was sent to 30 reference laboratories in the IBD-labnet surveillance network for quality assessment testing. This report summarises the diagnostic results submitted by the participating laboratories.
This report comprises the findings of an external quality assessment for the laboratory diagnosis of diphtheria serology under the European Diphtheria Surveillance Network.