Surveillance for infectious diseases in the European Union

In 1998, the European Parliament and Council concluded a debate on how to organise infectious disease surveillance in the European Union with a Decision to create a scheme for decentralised networks rather than build a large European surveillance centre (1,2). Institutions in member states receive funding to organise European surveillance for one or more infectious pathogens. A study reported in last week’s BMJ examines how these networks functioned in five international outbreaks (3). This study had been commissioned by the Directorate General Health and Consumer Protections (DG SANCO, then DGV) (4,5).