Focusing on two recent public health emergencies related to tick-borne diseases in two EU countries, ECDC experts investigated the public health response and specifically the involvement of the communities.
ECDC will start monitoring disease distribution in the EU and collecting EU data through the epidemiological surveillance network comprising the European Commission, ECDC and national authorities for epidemiological surveillance.
Vector sampling protocols outlining the recommended methods for collecting vectors have been issued today by ECDC and EFSA, to support entomologists and public-health professionals in Europe. It is a first attempt to summarise best-practices in terms of methods and strategies for sampling mosquitoes, sandflies, biting midges and ticks.
ECDC releases today an update of its tick-borne diseases communication toolkit to support public health authorities in devising communication initiatives as part of their tick-borne diseases prevention programmes.
2014, the focus of World Health day was on vector-borne diseases. World Health Day is a worldwide initiative celebrated every year on 7 April to mark the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1948.
On 8 March, the Health Protection Agency in the United Kingdom reported an additional fatal case of anthrax in Suffolk, England. It concerns a person who injected heroin. This brings the number of anthrax cases among injecting drug users in the EU to 14, since June 2012.
On 5 September 2012 the European Commission decision amending Decision 2000/96/EC as regards tick-borne encephalitis was published. As a result tick-borne encephalitis is added to the list of diseases to be covered by epidemiological surveillance within the Community.
ECDC publishes today a report surveying the prevalence of Tick Borne Encephalitis (TBE) in Europe. The report has epidemiological data from 2000 to 2010 for 20 out of 30 EU/EFTA countries. The data shows that a number of key risk areas can be found in Europe in terms of geographic spread, seasonal peaks and at-risk age groups. Most countries in Europe have surveillance systems although some vary which greatly impedes comparability and analysis of TBE.