Health Security and Disease Detection in the European Union

In a globalised world, national and international institutions in charge of health security can no longer only rely on traditional disease reporting mechanisms, not designed to recognise emergence of new hazards. New approaches are developing to improve the capacity of surveillance systems in detecting previously unknown threats. More recently, surveillance institutions have been actively searching for information about health threats using internet scanning tools, email distribution lists or networks that complement the early warning function of routine surveillance systems. Since its foundation, ECDC has developed an epidemic intelligence framework that encompasses all activities related to early identification of potential health hazards, their verification, assessment and investigation, in order to recommend public health control measures. Since June 2005, about 900 threats have been monitored by ECDC. Several threats made it necessary to develop formal risk assessments or to dispatch ECDC experts to outbreak areas. Examples of recent events, identified through the epidemic intelligence activity, are presented to illustrate the course of action from threat detection through risk management in Europe.