Preparing for (Re-)Emerging Arbovirus Infections in Europe

ESCMID has opened the registration for the ‘Preparing for (Re-Emerging) Arbovirus Infections in Europe’ course, to be held in Bucharest, Romania on March 21-23, 2018.

The course is co-organized by ESCMID Study Group for Infections in Travellers and Migrants (ESGITM), Erasmus MC: University Medical Center Rotterdam, and University of Oxford.

The aim is improving the participant’s knowledge of identification and management of arbovirus (arthropod-borne virus) infections and outbreaks at local and European levels. The course is part of the EU-PREPARE partnership, aimed at strengthening European preparedness for (re-)emerging infectious disease outbreaks. Topics include a review of arboviruses of importance to Europe, including endemic and travel-imported viruses; an overview of symptomatology, diagnostics and interpretation of laboratory results and an update on prevention, vaccine and treatments for these viruses. An overview of surveillance systems, European organizations, laboratories and clinical networks involved in surveillance, control and outbreak response and practical sessions covering serology interpretation, case scenarios and outbreak response exercises will also be covered. A range of European experts on arboviruses will be giving the course through a dynamic mix of presentations, case scenarios and outbreak exercises.

The Arbovirus Course is available for 20 – 30 doctors, nurses and laboratory staff from South / South-East Europe who might be involved in the identification, diagnosis or treatment of patients with arbovirus infections.

Interested in participating? Check the event page for more details.

PREPARE and the COMBACTE Network

In order to be able to rapidly initiate meaningful clinical research of any kind, in response to any kind of severe ID outbreak, an up-and-running pan-European clinical network is indispensable. COMBACTE is assisting in finding suitable sites for PREPARE in the ‘Hospital care’ area. PREPARE uses CLIN-Net and LAB-Net to perform clinical trials.

PREPARE is an EU funded network for harmonized large-scale clinical research studies on infectious diseases (IDs), prepared to rapidly respond to any severe ID outbreak, providing real-time evidence for clinical management of patients and for informing public health responses. PREPARE will establish a common European clinical research infrastructure covering over 600 primary care sites and over 600 hospital sites in 27 EU member states.