On 9 June, ECDC will be hosting a technical side-event to the United Nations High-Level Meeting on AIDS 2011. The event will highlight how countries and regions with differing epidemiology could improve their responses to HIV/AIDS.
ECDC Director Marc Sprenger at the European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) stressed the importance of the EU’s continuous commitment in the fight against hepatitis B and hepatitis C.
Artemisinin resistance in falciparum malaria has emerged in western Cambodia exactly where chloroquine resistance arose 50 years ago. Similarly to the resistance to chloroquine that spread to Africa, the experts are wondering whether artemisinin resistance will spread as widely. In such a case the consequences would be disastrous.
The authors describe a case of imported Plasmodium knowlesi infection in a French tourist acquired in Thailand. The patient had spent a three month beach holiday on the west coast of Thailand including a one month stay on the Island of Ko Payam.
Using surveillance data obtained from 21,888 imported Plasmodium falciparum cases in France during 1996-2003, factors independently associated with severe malaria (832 cases; ≈3.8%) were older age, European origin, travel to eastern Africa, absence of chemoprophylaxis, initial visit to a general practitioner, time to diagnosis of 4 to 12 days, and diagnosis during the fall-winter season.
This study describes the outcome of 25 travellers with severe malaria who returned from malaria-endemic regions and were treated at 7 centres in Europe with intravenous artesunate. Among these 25 patients, one child and 24 adults (mean ± SD age 44.1 ± 16.1 years), 10 patients received the dosing regimen for artesunate initially recommended by WHO and 11 received artesunate, 2.4 mg/kg/dose.
The first annual meeting of the European hepatitis B and C surveillance network takes place on 23-24 March 2011. Since 2009, ECDC has worked on preparing the enhanced surveillance of hepatitis B and C at EU/EEA level by establishing a network for hepatitis B and C surveillance and by carrying out a survey on prevention and surveillance activities in the Member States.
The emergence of cholera in Haiti once again reminds us of the ferocity with which infectious diseases can strike and of the complex interactions of emerging infectious diseases with social conditions, human migration, and the ecosystem.
Location:Hilton Am Stadtpark, Vienna, Austria
Organized by:International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID)
This descriptive study, based on national surveillance data of reported malaria cases, travelers’ statistics and data on malaria chemoprophylaxis prescriptions, estimates the incidence and trends of imported malaria in the Netherlands.