The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control was asked by the European Commission to assess the risk involved in changing the testing requirements for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and hepatitis C virus (HCV) with regard to the quality and safety of non-partner semen donations.
In order to explore whether the current capacity for EU/EEA-wide molecular characterisation for surveillance of HBV and HCV is sufficient to be feasible and what gaps need to be addressed, a survey of EU/EEA Member States was conducted to assess their laboratory capacity and needs in relation to the molecular characterisation of hepatitis B and C.
This report of the European Food Safety Authority and the European Centre for Disease Prevention
and Control presents the results of the zoonoses monitoring activities carried out in 2016 in 37
European countries (28 Member States and nine non-MS).
ECDC promotes the performance of external quality assessment (EQA) schemes, in which laboratories are sent simulated clinical specimens or bacterial isolates for testing by routine or reference laboratory methods. EQA schemes, or laboratory proficiency testing, provide information about the accuracy of different characterisation and typing methods as well as antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) and the sensitivity of the methods in place to detect a certain pathogen or novel resistance patterns.
This report presents the results of an external quality assessment carried out in 2014 to test laboratories’ ability to correctly identify strains of Haemophilus influenzae.
On the third meeting of the Hepatitis B and C Network national focal points and experts discussed the enhanced surveillance programme for hepatitis B and C across Europe and explored ways of improving it.
The report presents the results of the zoonoses monitoring activities carried out in 2013 in 32 European countries:eg 28 Member States (MS) and four non-Member States (non-MS) European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries.
Monitoring and responding to HIV and hepatitis C among people who inject drugs is the focus of two new reports from the EU drugs agencies EMCDDA and ECDC.
In May 2012 a collection of five strains of Haemophilus spp was sent to 28 participating reference laboratories in the IBD-labnet surveillance network for quality assurance testing. The laboratories were asked to characterise the five strains by performing standard laboratory protocols for the methods usually used by the laboratory for: species identification, biotyping and serotyping by serological methods and/or PCR.
The results of this EQA are published in the this report.