Sumario del documento publicado por el European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
On 24 and 25 September 2009, epidemiologists and laboratory experts from across the EU working on food- and waterborne diseases and zoonoses (FWD) met at San Anton in Malta, for the Second Annual Meeting of the European Food- and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses (FWD) Network in Europe to discuss the needs for surveillance of six priority diseases: salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, shiga-toxin producing/ verotoxigenic Escherichea coli (STEC/VTEC) infections, listeriosis, shigellosis, and yersiniosis. Non-EU network members and representatives from important stakeholders such as the European Commission (Directorate-General for Health and Consumers), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) (Regional Office for Europe) were also invited to the meeting.
The participants discussed the latest developments in, and future needs of, the FWD Network. A variety of topics were presented, ranging from burden of disease activities to the EFSA baseline study on Listeria. The experts also had the opportunity to present the status of surveillance of FWD in their countries, developments in laboratory methods, disease trends and recent outbreak investigations. The meeting again provided an excellent opportunity for exchanging experiences and strengthening international collaboration between different partners in the control and prevention of FWD within Europe.
This year’s disease-specific working groups were asked to discuss specific reporting variables, the need to harmonise surveillance and the means to achieve it, the method and frequency of reporting for automatic quarterly reports on Salmonella and VTEC and an annual enhanced surveillance report on six priority diseases. Experts were also asked to discuss the terms of reference for the users in the new Epidemic Intelligence System (EPIS) for the urgent inquiry network, information flow in the epidemic intelligence forum and criteria for sharing information in EPIS with stakeholders.
ECDC will bring forward issues that need agreement at a higher administrative level as well as EPIS user nominations and work towards implementing the suggested improvements and new developments.