Editor
Dr Ahmad Risk 

HIE Library Archive 1998/9  

Source: Eurosurveillance Weekly

On 24 September the European Parliament and Council, with the help of the Commission, decided to set up a network for epidemiological surveillance and an early warning and response system for the prevention and control of communicable diseases in the European Community (EC) (1). A network committee, representing the member states and the Commission, will consider measures proposed by the Commission before they are adopted. The Commission, with the member states, have been called upon to ensure that this network is consistent with and complementary to the relevant EC public health programmes and interchange of data between administrations (IDA) telematic projects. The decision comes into effect on 3 January 1999.

Scientists continue to debate whether surveillance, prevention, and control of infectious diseases should be carried out by and from a European centre for infectious diseases akin to the centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States or through a virtual centre based on electronic networks. The European Parliament had favoured a central institution and the Commission a network with national surveillance centres acting as nodes. To date specific disease networks, such as the European Centre for the Epidemiological Monitoring of AIDS, the EuroTB programme, ENTER-NET, and EWGLI (European Working Group on Legionella Infections), the development of telematics for effective communication about outbreaks, and an inventory of communicable disease surveillance, have produced European data sets and enabled effective action for the public health to be taken without a European centre (2,3). The debate now appears to have been overtaken by the decision of the European Parliament.

References:

• Decision no 2119/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 September 1998. Setting up a network for the epidemiological surveillance and control of communicable diseases in the community. Official Journal of the European Communities 1998; L 268/1, 3.10.98.
  
• Giesecke J, Weinberg J. A European centre for infectious disease? Lancet 1998; 352: 1308. (http://www.thelancet.com/)
  
• Not another European Institution. Lancet 1998; 352: 1237-8. (http://www.thelancet.com/)

Reported by Caroline Akehurst (cakehurs@phls.co.uk), PHLS Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, London, England