Health ministers wish to strengthen the network approach in response to bioterrorism threat

European health ministers are planning to strengthen and extend the existing European Union's (EU) communicable diseases network so that it can be used in the event of bioterrorist attacks (1). The network already links national surveillance institutes, and EU legislation lists the communicable diseases that need to be placed under community wide surveillance by using standardised collection and analysis of data (2). The box shows diseases to be included in the surveillance network.