ECDC holds the annual Observership programme for ESCMID, EUCIC and ESCV members

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) hosted a group of 21 members of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Disease (ESCMID), European Committee on Infection Control (EUCIC) and European Society for Clinical Virology (ESCV) for the seventh edition of the ECDC Observership initiative at the ECDC headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.

The five-day orientation programme gave the participants an overview of the ECDC and its activities, role and mandate in supporting public health actions to control and prevent infectious disease in the EU and globally. Sessions included presentations on ECDC core activities, such as communicable disease surveillance, microbiology support, production of scientific advice and epidemic intelligence to detect emerging communicable disease threats to the EU. Observers also attended presentations on the work of specific programmes at the Centre, addressing issues including emerging and vector borne diseases, antimicrobial resistance, and hepatitis. In addition to formal presentations, the programme included several hands-on exercises.

The presentations and the hands-on exercises facilitated interaction with ECDC experts and other observers who gained practical experience in creating rapid risk assessments, interpreting and integrating typing data in European-level surveillance and applying evidence-based methods for the production of content for public-health decision making. This was the seventh year of the ECDC observership initiative and feedback from both ECDC staff and observers remained positive.

The observers travelled to the ECDC from all over the world; twelve 12 came from EU Member States, while others travelled from Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Nepal, Turkey and Ukraine.

More information, including reports of previous Observership visits and application information, is available from the ESCMID, EUCIC and ESCV websites: