ESCMID ECDC Observerships
7 - 11 September 2015, Stockholm, Sweden
ESCMID and ESCV support 12 observers to visit the ECDC for 5 days!
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) hosted a group of ESCMID members for the ESCMID ECDC Observership initiative between 7-11th September at ECDC’s headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.
The nine ESCMID Observers were joined by three Observers from the European Society for Clinical Virology (ESCV) for a 5 day orientation programme designed to offer participants an overview of ECDC’s activities and its role in supporting public health actions to control and prevent infectious disease in the EU and globally. The 2015 programme covered a variety of topics including preparedness, surveillance and epidemic intelligence, antimicrobial resistance, vaccine-preventable diseases and sexually-transmitted infections. In addition to formal presentations, the Programme included several “hands-on” exercises including producing a rapid risk assessment on an infectious disease threat, analysing EU molecular surveillance data and developing public health guidance using Evidence-based approaches. The Observers saw ECDC’s daily ‘Round Table’ meeting where emerging infectious disease threats with potential public health importance are presented and discussed. The Observers also presented a short summary of an aspect of their work in the Observer Project Forum to peers and ECDC experts.
The ESCMID Observers to ECDC this year were from Russia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, Nigeria, Latvia, Portugal and Italy (see below). Their visit reports are available online: ECDC as an ESCMID Collaborative Centre. This is the third year of the ESCMID ECDC Observership initiative and the feedback from both ECDC staff and ESCMID Observers continues to be positive. It is therefore hoped that the ECDC Observership programme will be repeated again in 2016.
ESCMID-supported observers to ECDC in 2015:
- Charles Elikwu, Nigeria
- John Paul Fobiwe, Germany
- Sniedze Laivacuma, Latvia
- Alina Martynova, Russian Federation
- Claudia Recanatini, Italy
- Bettina Ruehe, Switzerland
- André Silva-Pinto, Portugal
- Sean Wasserman, South Africa
- Rudyard Santillan Yap, New Zealand