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MEETING REPORT - Surveillance and studies in a pandemic: Fourth meeting of the SSiaP working group - Stockholm, July 2009 (ECDC, excerpts, edited)
MEETING REPORT - Surveillance and studies in a pandemic: Fourth meeting of the SSiaP working group - Stockholm, July 2009 (ECDC, excerpts, edited)
[Original Full Document: LINK. EDITED.]
MEETING REPORT - Surveillance and studies in a pandemic: Fourth meeting of the SSiaP working group - Stockholm, July 2009
Background
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is an EU agency with a mandate to operate the EU surveillance networks (including former dedicated surveillance networks, DSNs) and identify, assess, and communicate current and emerging threats to human health from communicable diseases (CDs). As such, it also has a mandate to coordinate and conduct scientific work in relation to this.
Recognising the importance of surveillance in a pandemic (SiaP), ECDC, together with the EU/EEA Member States, has been developing European thinking on SiaP. This has been accomplished through a series of meetings and papers, originally started in 2006.
ECDC?s efforts in this area also covered mathematical modelling, i.e. the attempt to mathematically model the progress of an infectious disease in order to discover the likely outcome of an epidemic or pandemic. This approach has been developed in parallel with similar WHO endeavours and recommendations. In addition to merely studying the reporting components, there are a number of unknowns (or gaps) that need to be estimated in order to inform, improve and evaluate the responses at both country and EU levels.
Consequently, ECDC has expanded the scope of its efforts from the initial ?surveillance in a pandemic? to ?surveillance and studies in a pandemic?, or SSiaP for short.
Due to the continued threat of influenza A(H5N1) and the current H1N1 pandemic, several countries have already implemented a number of the theoretical reporting systems and concepts described earlier by ECDC [1] and WHO [2].
The previous SiaP meeting had concluded that some of the tasks at hand should be performed by all countries, whereas some of the work could be carried out by only a small subset of countries, as long as protocols are comparable and data and analyses are rapidly shared. In order to assure comparability and to allow for more powerful studies combining data, the methods used in these countries need to be standardised.
This meeting, organised at short notice, was attended by participants from 19 EU/EEA countries. In addition, the meeting saw representatives from the European Commission, two candidate countries and two potential candidate countries. Invited speakers came from WHO headquarters (Geneva) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta). Also attending were representatives from the Australian Department of Health and Ageing (Canberra) and the Public Health Agency of Canada (Ottawa).
Objectives
The objectives of the meeting were:
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[Original Full Document: LINK. EDITED.]
MEETING REPORT - Surveillance and studies in a pandemic: Fourth meeting of the SSiaP working group - Stockholm, July 2009
Background
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is an EU agency with a mandate to operate the EU surveillance networks (including former dedicated surveillance networks, DSNs) and identify, assess, and communicate current and emerging threats to human health from communicable diseases (CDs). As such, it also has a mandate to coordinate and conduct scientific work in relation to this.
Recognising the importance of surveillance in a pandemic (SiaP), ECDC, together with the EU/EEA Member States, has been developing European thinking on SiaP. This has been accomplished through a series of meetings and papers, originally started in 2006.
ECDC?s efforts in this area also covered mathematical modelling, i.e. the attempt to mathematically model the progress of an infectious disease in order to discover the likely outcome of an epidemic or pandemic. This approach has been developed in parallel with similar WHO endeavours and recommendations. In addition to merely studying the reporting components, there are a number of unknowns (or gaps) that need to be estimated in order to inform, improve and evaluate the responses at both country and EU levels.
Consequently, ECDC has expanded the scope of its efforts from the initial ?surveillance in a pandemic? to ?surveillance and studies in a pandemic?, or SSiaP for short.
Due to the continued threat of influenza A(H5N1) and the current H1N1 pandemic, several countries have already implemented a number of the theoretical reporting systems and concepts described earlier by ECDC [1] and WHO [2].
The previous SiaP meeting had concluded that some of the tasks at hand should be performed by all countries, whereas some of the work could be carried out by only a small subset of countries, as long as protocols are comparable and data and analyses are rapidly shared. In order to assure comparability and to allow for more powerful studies combining data, the methods used in these countries need to be standardised.
This meeting, organised at short notice, was attended by participants from 19 EU/EEA countries. In addition, the meeting saw representatives from the European Commission, two candidate countries and two potential candidate countries. Invited speakers came from WHO headquarters (Geneva) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta). Also attending were representatives from the Australian Department of Health and Ageing (Canberra) and the Public Health Agency of Canada (Ottawa).
Objectives
The objectives of the meeting were:
- to share the countries? experiences with the H1N1 pandemic to date and discuss the various strategic parameters related to action;
- to learn from experiences abroad, particularly from North America;
- to identify groups and investigators who are conducting relevant work in Europe and other regions of the world in order to enable ECDC to access their knowledge, experiences and lessons learned, so as to share them with other countries;
- to specifically address the issue of monitoring in a pandemic (WHO component 3) and reach an agreement on the minimum that EU Member States can reasonably deliver in a pandemic; and
- to plan joint work through the rest of 2009 and the first half of 2010.
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