ECDC country visit to North Macedonia to discuss surveillance of communicable diseases

Technical cooperation with Western Balkans and Türkiye aims to improve their One Health response to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and enhance surveillance of laboratory-confirmed severe acute respiratory infections (SARI). The project is funded by the European Commission (DG NEAR) under the Instrument of Pre-accession Assistance (IPA).

Implementation of this Action is structured around three technical Work Streams. ‘Work Stream 1: Preparatory measures to enable the authorities of IPA beneficiaries to participate in ECDC activities and systems’ aims to support countries in the Western Balkans and Türkiye as they prepare for full participation in ECDC’s activities. This will enable them to fulfil ECDC requirements for data and information submission (including completeness and timeliness) at the minimum level required by the EU.

The focus of this stream is to:

• further enhance communicable disease surveillance and control capacities of beneficiary countries,
• improve health emergency preparedness capabilities and
• support the development of public health microbiology laboratory systems.
   

The expected results of this stream are:

• better EU-level data so that communicable disease surveillance data are more comparable, timely and reliable when an IPA beneficiary joins the EU or ECDC;
• more comprehensive ECDC scientific and surveillance outputs in the long term, covering a broader geographical area within Europe that includes the Western Balkans and Türkiye; and
• improved response to public health threats from infectious diseases at the national level, with better early detection of and response to serious cross-border threats at the EU level.

In the context of Work Stream 1, ECDC conducted a technical visit to North Macedonia to acquire additional knowledge and information on the country’s national surveillance system, as well as how the system is operated and governed. These insights will provide ECDC with a comprehensive overview of the needs, vulnerabilities and strengths of the surveillance system and support identification of opportunities for tailored support and areas where surveillance operations can be further strengthened.