The European Scientific Working group on Influenza (ESWI) is a network organisation of stakeholders with a mission to reduce the burden of influenza in Europe. It holds regular conferences that have become the largest European scientific forums dedicated to influenza.
On 14-15 January 2015 an ECDC consultation gathered public health experts, entomologists and epidemiologists from Europe, as well as experts from WHO, CDC and PacNet, to review the EU preparedness to dengue and chikungunya importation and onwards transmission and produce a roadmap towards improved EU preparedness.
The ECDC annual meeting of the European Influenza Surveillance Network (EISN) prepared in collaboration with the EISN Coordination Committee, brought together epidemiological and virological surveillance contact points and representatives from reference laboratories from the 31 EU/EEA Member States as well as participants from EU pre-accession countries, Eastern European Neighbourhood Policy partner countries, the WHO Regional Office for Europe, and involved international institutions.
The 2015 meeting of the Joint ECDC/WHO Surveillance Network for Tuberculosis was held in The Hague, the Netherlands, on 26-27 May 2015. The meeting was organised jointly by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and WHO/Europe for TB surveillance experts from WHO European region including European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) Member States (MSs). The participants included 47 nominated contact points for TB surveillance from 42 countries, as well as experts from ECDC and WHO/Europe, WHO headquarters and country offices. In addition, experts from seven EU Enlargement Countries and from the KNCV TB Foundation (the Netherlands) attended the meeting as observers.
On 3 December 2015, ECDC hosts a technical meeting to discuss influenza vaccine effectiveness studies and how they can best meet public health needs as well as regulatory requirements.
The 2009 influenza A(H1N1) pandemic was declared over in August 2010 by the World Health Organization. Europe has now entered a new inter-pandemic phase of seasonal influenza.
This online course was developed because seasonal influenza vaccination of health care workers (HCWs) is recommended in Europe but vaccination uptake remains low in most countries.