Adjustments to surveillance practices in the EU will enhance preparedness and public health response to emerging infectious diseases, thereby helping to contain human and economic costs. These are the conclusions of an article published this week in Science magazine, describing a study co-authored by ECDC.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) have published their annual report on zoonoses and food-borne outbreaks in the European Union for 2010.
The chikungunya virus outbreak that occurred in 2007 in northern Italy (Emilia-Romagna region) prompted the development of a large scale monitoring system of the population density of Aedes albopictus (Skuse, 1894), comparable at the provincial and municipal levels. In 2007, egg density data presented an aggregated distribution (VMR >1) and Taylor's power law was applied to calculate the minimum number of ovitraps needed to obtain the prefixed precision levels: D=0.2 in the areas where the chikungunya epidemic occurred and D=0.3 in all the other urban areas >600 ha.
As parts of Germany are considered potential colonization areas for A. albopictus, monitoring the trends of Chikungunya importation to Germany is a prerequisite for early detection of potential autochthonus cases.
This paper describes a small retrospective observational study of Israeli travellers presenting to a tropical medicine clinic with a history of prolonged (4 weeks), non-traumatic arthralgia or arthritis over a 5 year period.
ECDC and EFSA have just launched the annual report on zoonoses and food-borne outbreaks in the European Union for 2009. The report shows that Salmonella cases in humans fell by 17% in 2009, marking a decrease for the fifth consecutive year