European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

A European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is on course to be operational in 2005. The European Union (EU) summit in December 2003 decided that the ECDC will be based in Sweden, and the Swedish government has chosen Stockholm for its location.

Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne said, "I am very pleased that we have all been able to move forward quickly to provide European citizens with better protection from any future epidemics. The lessons we learned during the outbreaks of SARS in 2003 and bird flu this year have been acted upon. Infectious diseases can pose a deadly threat--and they do not respect national borders."

Although the EU has a system for Europe-wide epidemiological surveillance of infectious diseases, cooperation in investigating and controlling disease is largely ad hoc. For example, the small EU team sent to help the World Health Organization (WHO) investigate avian influenza in Vietnam is part of an EU project to train disease investigation experts. The EU expert group on SARS created during the outbreak in spring 2003 was put together under the European Communicable Disease Network. While these have been good short-term solutions, they are not sustainable in the long term.

The ECDC will enable Europe to pool its disease control expertise more effectively, allowing EU disease outbreak investigation teams to be put together quickly and efficiently. The center will ensure that results of its investigations are available to public health authorities around the EU. It also will produce authoritative advice and recommendations to guide EU and national decision makers.

There is already a wealth of scientific expertise in the member states' public health institutes. The aim of the ECDC is to network this expertise and to facilitate coordination between the member state institutes.

As the center takes over the operation of these networks, it will make use of the expertise and working relationships they have already established. ECDC also will assist the work on monitoring and preparedness planning with respect to bioterrorist attacks that have been pursued by the EU Health Security Task Force.

For more information on ECDC, visit http://europa.eu.int/comm/health/ph_overview/strategy/ecdc/ecdc_en.htm.