Surveillance for infectious diseases in the European Union

doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7317.818

BMJ 2001;323:818-819 ( 13 October )

Editorials

Surveillance for infectious diseases in the European Union

A small European centre may have an important coordinating role

Education and debate p 861

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In 1998 a spirited debate over how to organise surveillance for infectious diseases in the European Union culminated in thedecision by the European parliament and council to create a schemefor a decentralised network rather than build a large centralEuropean surveillance centre.^1-3 According to the scheme, institutionsin member states receive funding to organise European surveillancefor one or more related infectious pathogens. Using an approachbased on hazard analysis and critical control points, MacLehoseand colleagues (p 861) studied how these national networks functionedin five international outbreaks.⁴ They identified seven commoncritical control points and concluded that the networking approachwas successful but needed augmentation under a framework of improvingexisting organisational, financial, and legaluncertainties.

An important contributor to the networks' success is the high level of participation by the national public health institutes,probably in part because these institutions have had a role in. . . [Full text of this article]

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Communicable disease outbreaks involving more than one country: systems approach to evaluating the response: Laura MacLehose, Helmut Brand, Ivonne Camaroni, Naomi Fulop, O Noel Gill, Ralf Reintjes, Oliver Schaefer, Martin McKee, and Julius Weinberg
BMJ 2001 323: 861-863. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]