The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is an agency of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

(EU) whose mission is to strengthen Europe's defences against infectious diseases. It covers a wide spectrum of activities, such as:

surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing, or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as ...

, epidemic intelligence, response, scientific advice,

microbiology Microbiology () is the branches of science, scientific study of microorganisms, those being of unicellular organism, unicellular (single-celled), multicellular organism, multicellular (consisting of complex cells), or non-cellular life, acellula ...

, preparedness,

public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the de ...

training, international relations, health communication, and the scientific journal ''

Eurosurveillance ''Eurosurveillance'' is an open-access medical journal covering epidemiology, surveillance, prevention, and control of communicable diseases with a focus on topics relevant for Europe. The journal is a non-profit publication and is published by th ...

''. The centre was established in 2004 and is headquartered in

Solna Solna ( or , ), also known as Solna Municipality, is a municipality in central Stockholm County, Sweden, located just north of Stockholm City Centre. Its seat is located in the town of Solna, which is a part of the Stockholm urban area. Solna i ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

Legal basis

The ECDC was established b
Regulation (EC) No 851/2004
deriving its legal basis from Articles 251(2) and 152(4) TEC, which together allow the European Commission to submit proposals for regulations seeking to achieve the EU's objectives of ensuring public health.

History and operations

As EU economic integration and open frontiers increased, cooperation on

issues became more important. While the idea of creating a European centre for disease control had been discussed previously by public health experts, the 2003

SARS Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the virus SARS-CoV-1, the first identified strain of the SARS-related coronavirus. The first known cases occurred in November 2002, and the ...

outbreak and the rapid spread of SARS across country borders confirmed the urgency of the creation of an EU-wide institution for public health. ECDC was set up in record time for an EU agency: the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

presented draft legislation in July 2003; by the spring of 2004,

Regulation Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. Fo ...

(EC) 851/2004 had been passed, and in May 2005 the centre became operational. The European Parliament appointed UK Conservative John Bowis as rapporteur for the regulation, thus making him responsible for drafting of the report, its presentation to Parliament, and navigating it through the legislative process. The relevance of the centre's mission was confirmed shortly after it began operating, when the arrival of

H5N1 Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 (A/H5N1) is a subtype of the influenza A virus, which causes the disease avian influenza (often referred to as "bird flu"). It is enzootic (maintained in the population) in many bird populations, and also panzoo ...

avian influenza Avian influenza, also known as avian flu or bird flu, is a disease caused by the influenza A virus, which primarily affects birds but can sometimes affect mammals including humans. Wild aquatic birds are the primary host of the influenza A viru ...

in the EU's neighbourhood led to fears that the disease could adapt or mutate into a

pandemic A pandemic ( ) is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has a sudden increase in cases and spreads across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic (epi ...

strain of human

influenza Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These sympto ...

. The centre moved to its current location at Gustav III:s Boulevard in Solna, Sweden, on 3 March 2018. The ECDC manages key initiatives that focus on surveillance and response support, and public health capacity and communication, while the office of the chief scientist oversees the Microbiology Coordination Section and the Scientific Advice Coordination Section, along with seven Disease Programmes. The Disease Programmes focus on specific disease groups: *

Antimicrobial resistance Antimicrobial resistance (AMR or AR) occurs when microbes evolve mechanisms that protect them from antimicrobials, which are drugs used to treat infections. This resistance affects all classes of microbes, including bacteria (antibiotic resista ...

and

Healthcare-associated infection A hospital-acquired infection, also known as a nosocomial infection (from the Greek , meaning "hospital"), is an infection that is acquired in a hospital or other health care, healthcare facility. To emphasize both hospital and nonhospital sett ...

s * Emerging and Vector-borne Diseases * Food- and Waterborne Diseases and

Zoonoses A zoonosis (; plural zoonoses) or zoonotic disease is an infectious disease of humans caused by a pathogen (an infectious agent, such as a virus, bacterium, parasite, fungi, or prion) that can jump from a non-human vertebrate to a human. When h ...

Sexually Transmitted Infection A sexually transmitted infection (STI), also referred to as a sexually transmitted disease (STD) and the older term venereal disease (VD), is an infection that is Transmission (medicine), spread by Human sexual activity, sexual activity, e ...

s, including

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of '' Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the im ...

and Blood-borne Viruses * Influenza *

Tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

Vaccine-preventable diseases A vaccine-preventable disease is an infectious disease for which an effective preventive vaccine exists. If a person acquires a vaccine-preventable disease and dies from it, the death is considered a vaccine-preventable death. The most common and ...

Interaction with EU institutions

EU institutions (European Commission, European Parliament, and the Council of the European Union) have a direct relationship in the functioning of the ECDC by providing oversight and funding and receiving strategic guidance from the agency. The ECDC is responsible for providing strategic guidance and ensuring that the EU's activities align with broader EU health policies and objectives. This involves setting priorities, outlining long-term goals, and integrating the ECDC's work into the EU's overall public health strategy. EU institutions also ensure financial oversight by allocating the ECDC's annual budget, monitoring expenditures, and ensuring that resources are used effectively and transparently. Through its Health Security Committee, the Commission collaborates especially closely with the ECDC to respond to health emergencies, share information, and implement joint actions across member states.

Collaboration with other EU agencies

Source:

European Medicines Agency (EMA) The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is an Agencies of the European Union, agency of the European Union (EU) in charge of the evaluation and supervision of Medication, pharmaceutical products. Prior to 2004, it was known as the European Agenc ...

: The ECDC collaborates with EMA on monitoring vaccine safety, pharmacovigilance, and managing public health emergencies. European Food Safety Authority (EFSA): Joint efforts focus on controlling animal diseases and foodborne pathogens. Joint Research Centre (JRC): Cooperation involves research and data sharing on emerging health threats. European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA): To collaborate on prevention efforts regarding the spread of drug-related infectious diseases across the EU.

Publications

ECDC publishes numerous scientific and technical reports covering various issues related to the prevention and control of communicable diseases. Comprehensive reports from key technical and scientific meetings are also produced by the organization. Towards the end of every calendar year, ECDC publishes its Annual Epidemiological Report, which analyses surveillance data and infectious disease threats. As well as offering an overview of the public health situation in the European Union, the report offers an indication of where further public health action may be required in order to reduce the burden caused by communicable diseases. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is monitoring the

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus Middle or The Middle may refer to: * Centre (geometry), the point equally distant from the outer limits. Places * Middle (sheading), a subdivision of the Isle of Man * Middle Bay (disambiguation) * Middle Brook (disambiguation) * Middle Creek ...

. Other ECDC publications include disease-specific surveillance reports and threat reports, as well as analyses of trends in European public health.

''Eurosurveillance''

'', a European

peer-reviewed journal An academic journal (or scholarly journal or scientific journal) is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. They serve as permanent and transparent forums for the dissemination, scr ...

devoted to the epidemiology, surveillance, prevention and control of infectious diseases, has been published by ECDC since March 2007. The journal was founded in 1995 and, before its move to ECDC, was a collaborative project between the European Commission, the

Institut de Veille Sanitaire The Institut de veille sanitaire (InVS; English: French Institute for Public Health Surveillance, literally "Institute of Health Surveillance") was a French public establishment of the Health minister. It was merged in 2016 with other health agenc ...

(France) and the

Health Protection Agency The Health Protection Agency (HPA) was a non-departmental public body in England. It was set up by the UK government in 2003 to protect the public from threats to their health from infectious diseases and environmental hazards. The HPA's role w ...

(United Kingdom). ''Eurosurveillance'' is an

open-access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

(i.e. free) web-based journal that reports infectious disease issues from a European perspective. It publishes results from ECDC and the EU-funded surveillance networks, thereby providing the scientific community with timely access to new information. The journal is published every Thursday.

Member states

In addition to the

member states A member state is a state that is a member of an international organization or of a federation or confederation. Since the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) include some members that are not sovereign states ...

of the union, three members of the

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade Asso ...

also participate in the ECDC network:

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

Liechtenstein Liechtenstein (, ; ; ), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein ( ), is a Landlocked country#Doubly landlocked, doubly landlocked Swiss Standard German, German-speaking microstate in the Central European Alps, between Austria in the east ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. The

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

benefited from the ECDC during the Brexit transition period from February 1 to December 31, 2020.

COVID-19

During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, involved in the

European Union response to the COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic and its spread in Europe has had significant effects on some major EU member countries and on European Union institutions, especially in the areas of finance, civil liberties, and relations between member states. Outbr ...

the ECDC published data related to COVID-19 such as the number of people affected in the European Union.

References

Citations

Sources

ecdc.europa.eu

ecdc.europa.eu

External links

*
Eurosurveillance
* {{Authority control Agencies of the European Union Public health organizations European medical and health organizations 2004 establishments in Sweden 2004 in the European Union Government agencies established in 2004 Stockholm County Scientific organizations based in Sweden National public health agencies Health and the European Union