This report describes the external quality assessment (EQA) scheme for the European Legionnaires’ disease Surveillance network, for the detection, isolation, identification, and enumeration of Legionella species.
This report describes the external quality assessment (EQA) scheme for the European Legionnaires’ disease Surveillance network, for the detection, isolation, identification, and enumeration of Legionella spp.
External quality assessment (EQA) is an essential part of any laboratory-based surveillance system, allowing for the monitoring of performance and comparability of results from participating laboratories, identification of potential issues and deployment of resources and training where necessary.
External quality assessment (EQA) is an essential part of any laboratory-based surveillance system, allowing for the monitoring of performance and comparability of results from participating laboratories, identification of potential issues and deployment of resources and training where necessary.
This is the first EQA exercise for laboratories participating in surveillance from the ELDSNet network that has been
organised by ECDC since 2015 and the EQA format and arrangements have changed. The current EQA scheme
uses an outbreak scenario with a package of clinical and environmental samples for the participating laboratories to process, depending on their technical capacity and protocols.