Weekly releases (1997–2007) - Volume 8, Issue 25, 17 June 2004

The Latvian public health service dates back to 1947. The Sanitary Epidemiological Service, created in Soviet times, provided two main functions – assessment of health risk factors, including surveillance of communicable diseases, and inspection.

National communicable disease surveillance, prevention and control in Slovenia is coordinated by the Communicable Diseases Centre of the Institute of Public Health of the Republic of Slovenia

In the past eight years there have been three pandemic 'false alarms' caused by avian H5N1 viruses. The first of these in 1997 was a turning point in our understanding of the difficulties of vaccine development from a lethal avian virus.

The European Surveillance of Sexually Transmitted Infections network, at its third collaborative group meeting in May 2004, established two working groups to facilitate information exchange on lymphogranuloma venereum