Following an invitation from Greek authorities, a team of experts from the ECDC Programme for HIV/AIDS, Sexually Transmitted and Blood-borne infections, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and the WHO Regional Office for Europe will visit Greece on 28 and 29 May 2012. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) will join the mission as observers.
In an expert meeting in Stockholm, identified synergies and gaps in the availability of sexual health data, programmes, initiatives and policies across Europe and possibilities for future work will be discussed.
WHO “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” is an annual campaign that makes part of major global effort to support healthcare workers to improve hand hygiene practices in healthcare settings, and thus support the prevention of often life-threatening healthcare-associated infections.
ECDC and the European Respiratory Society (ERS) have developed 21 patient-centred standards that aim to guide clinicians and public health workers in their daily work to ensure optimal diagnosis, treatment and prevention of tuberculosis (TB) in Europe. Nearly 74 000 reported TB cases in the EU/EEA in 2010 clearly show that tuberculosis remains a public health challenge across the region.
In a hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels, ECDC Director Marc Sprenger underlined the importance of sufficient resources at national level to diagnose and adequately treat tuberculosis.
This workshop enabled all to agree on the relevance of EPIS VPD to be used as a platform for the reporting and monitoring of measles outbreak in the EU, agree on the type of information to be reported, the nature of outbreaks to be notified and the further usage by ECDC (e.g. European Monthly Measles Monitoring1) and other Member States of data that will be shared through EPIS VPD by countries.
To mark World Tuberculosis Day on 24 March 2012, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the WHO Regional Office for Europe publish their joint report, Tuberculosis surveillance and monitoring in Europe 2012.
A meeting and a workshop on the ECDC point prevalence survey (PPS) of healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial use in acute care hospitals took take place in London on 5-6 March 2012.