ECDC is monitoring reports from three countries (France, the United Kingdom and the United States) of cases of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) associated with travel to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
A pilot project was carried out to investigate the feasibility of HIVDR surveillance in EU/EEA countries and to make recommendations for the design and implementation of a potential future HIVDR surveillance system at the European level.
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.
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.
In July 2014, a panel of two viable isolates of N. meningitidis of the major disease-causing serogroups with three simulated cerebrospinal fluid (non-culture) samples for molecular studies, was sent by UK NEQAS to 30 reference laboratories in the IBD-labnet surveillance network for quality assessment testing. This report summarises the diagnostic results submitted by the participating laboratories.