This expert opinion is intended to support national decision-making by summarising the considerations and concerns of some EU/EEA countries when they discussed whether to introduce the 4CMenB vaccine into their national immunisation programmes.
An outbreak of diphtheria is currently being experienced in Yemen and Venezuela. One hundred and twenty diphtheria cases have been reported in Yemen in the last two months, while Venezuela has seen more than 500 probable cases in 2017, as detailed in today’s Communicable Disease Threat Report.
An EQA scheme for antimicrobial susceptibility testing in Neisseria gonorrhoeae has been available to laboratories participating in ECDC’s European Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) surveillance network since 2010. This is the third EQA to be published on antimicrobial susceptibility testing in Neisseria gonorrhoeae.
According to test results from the annual European Gonococcal Antimicrobial Surveillance Programme (Euro-GASP), resistance levels to the main antimicrobials used for treatment of gonorrhoea infection have seen an encouraging decrease since 2010.
The European Gonococcal Antimicrobial Surveillance Programme (Euro-GASP) follows a decentralised and centralised testing model. In 2015, 24 EU/EEA Member States participated in Euro-GASP, 17 through decentralised testing.
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.