On 25 and 26 of July, two additional cases of soft-tissue anthrax among injecting drug users have been reported from the United Kingdom and Denmark. The genetic typing of the strains related to these cases is ongoing.
From April to early July 2012 an unusual number and pattern of fatalities among young children were reported by Kantha Bopa Children’s Hospital in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. The patients presented with fever, respiratory distress and signs of encephalitis, and most of the children were under 3 years old.
The Cambodian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) are currently investigating a number of cases an undiagnosed illness that has resulted in the deaths of several children in Cambodia in the past 2 months. According to the WHO, the latest laboratory results indicate that “a significant proportion of the samples tested positive for Enterovirus 71 (EV-71), which causes hand foot and mouth disease”.
On 3 July the Cuban Ministry of Health confirmed an outbreak of cholera in the south-western city of Manzanillo. It is the first time in almost 150 years that an outbreak of cholera is reported in the island.
The annual meeting of the healthcare-associated infections surveillance network (HAI-Net) and of the HAI-Net coordination group took place in Stockholm on 19-21 June 2012.
As of May 2012, Vietnam continues to see sustained high incidence of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) since the beginning of the year. China, Hong Kong (China), Macao (China) and Singapore have been reporting an increase in number of cases.
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.
This study, strong of an almost complete follow-up of all children born in Denmark from 2003 to 2008, provides evidence that the DTaP-IPV-HiB vaccine is not associated to an overall increased risk of febrile seizures and epilepsy.
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.