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

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

(EU) whose mission is to strengthen Europe's defences against infectious diseases. It covers a wide spectrum of activities, such as: surveillance, epidemic intelligence, response, scientific advice, microbiology, 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 det ...

training, international relations, health communication, and the scientific journal '' Eurosurveillance''. The centre was established in 2004 and is headquartered in

Solna Solna Municipality ( sv, Solna kommun or , ) is a municipality in Stockholm County in 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 is one of the ...

, Sweden.

History

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 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), the first identified strain of the SARS coronavirus species, ''seve ...

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 executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

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 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 can cause illness in humans and many other animal species. A bird-adapted strain of H5N1, called HPAI A(H5N1) for highly pathogenic avian influenza virus of type ...

avian influenza Avian influenza, known informally as avian flu or bird flu, is a variety of influenza caused by viruses adapted to birds.

in the EU's neighbourhood led to fears that the disease could adapt or mutate into a pandemic strain of human influenza. The Centre moved to its current location at Gustav III:s Boulevard 40, 16973 Solna, Sweden, on 3 March 2018.

Organisational structure

Units

The ECDC currently operates on a matrix structure based on five units: * Office of the Chief Scientist * Surveillance and Response Support * Public Health Capacity and Communication * Resource Management and Coordination * Information and Communication Technologies The office of the Chief Scientist oversees the seven Disease Programmes, the Microbiology Coordination Section and the Scientific Advice Coordination Section.

Programs

The Disease Programmes focus on specific disease groups: *

Antimicrobial resistance Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when microbes evolve mechanisms that protect them from the effects of antimicrobials. All classes of microbes can evolve resistance. Fungi evolve antifungal resistance. Viruses evolve antiviral resistance. P ...

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 facility. To emphasize both hospital and nonhospital settings, it is so ...

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 bacterium, virus, parasite or prion) that has jumped from a non-human (usually a vertebrate) to a human ...

* Sexually Transmitted Infections, 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 immune ...

and Blood-borne Viruses * Influenza *

Tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...

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 s ...

Two shared-resource units – Surveillance and Response Support, and Public Health Capacity and Communication – provide specialist expertise. The Information and Communication Technologies Unit provides infrastructure, application development and support. The Resource Management and Coordination Unit controls ECDC's human and financial resources.

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. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is monitoring the

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus ''Middle East respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus'' (''MERS-CoV''), or EMC/2012 ( HCoV-EMC/2012), is the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). It is a species of coronavirus which infects humans, bats, and camels. Th ...

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

''Eurosurveillance''

'' Eurosurveillance'', a European peer-reviewed journal 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 (France) and the

Health Protection Agency The Health Protection Agency (HPA) was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom. It was an organisation that was set up by the UK government in 2003 to protect the public from threats to their health from infectious diseases and envi ...

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

open-access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

(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 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 As ...

also participate in the ECDC network:

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

Liechtenstein Liechtenstein (), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (german: link=no, Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarch ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

. 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 Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, 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, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, 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 members countries and on European Union institutions, especially in the areas of finance, civil liberties, and relations between member states. Outbre ...

the ECDC published data related to COVID-19 such as 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