Communicable diseases

(Source: europa.eu.int)

Communicable diseases such as Tuberculosis, Measles and Influenza, represent a serious risk to human health, contributing to about one third of all deaths occurring globally. Communicable diseases do not respect national frontiers and can spread rapidly if actions are not taken to combat them. New diseases such as AIDS emerge and others develop drug-resistant forms such as multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, and methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. In addition, new scientific developments on the role of infectious agents in chronic conditions such as cancer, heart diseases or allergies are under investigation.

In responding to these various issues the Network on Communicable Diseases started work in 1999 (Decision 2119/98/EC of the European Parliament and the Council). The Communicable Diseases Network is build on work done with Member States and consists of two pillars

Surveillance

Commission Decision 2000/96/EC specifies the list of communicable diseases (as listed on http://europa.eu.int) to be placed progressively under EU-wide surveillance and the criteria for their selection. The network's main task is to monitor and track developments. Within that network disease-specific networks (as listed on http://europa.eu.int)  have been created.

(The Maltese list of communicable diseases can be viewed by clicking here.)

Early warning

The second pillar of the network is an early warning and response system (EWRS) to alert public health authorities in Member States and the Commission on outbreaks with greater than national dimensions, so that a co-ordinated EU action may be required (Commission Decision 2000/57/EC).

To increase the comparability of the data from the different Member States an important Commission decision was taken on 19 March 2002. This decision 2002/253/EC lays down case definitions for reporting communicable diseases to the Community network.

Case Definitions

The unit published the case definitions of all mandatory notifiable infectious diseases (December 2004). One can access these case definitions by clicking here.