Diagnostic issues and capabilities in 48 isolation facilities in 16 European countries: data from EuroNHID surveys

  • Background: Highly infectious diseases (HIDs) are defined as being transmissible from person to person, causing life-threatening illnesses and presenting a serious public health hazard. The sampling, handling and transport of specimens from patients with HIDs present specific bio-safety concerns. Findings The European Network for HID project aimed to record, in a cross-sectional study, the infection control capabilities of referral centers for HIDs across Europe and assesses the level of achievement to previously published guidelines. In this paper, we report the current diagnostic capabilities and bio-safety measures applied to diagnostic procedures in these referral centers. Overall, 48 isolation facilities in 16 European countries were evaluated. Although 81% of these referral centers are located near a biosafety level 3 laboratory, 11% and 31% of them still performed their microbiological and routine diagnostic analyses, respectively, without bio-safety measures. Conclusions: The discrepancies among the referral centers surveyed between the level of practices and the European Network of Infectious Diseases (EUNID) recommendations have multiple reasons of which the interest of the individuals in charge and the investment they put in preparedness to emerging outbreaks. Despite the fact that the less prepared centers can improve by just updating their practice and policies any support to help them to achieve an acceptable level of biosecurity is welcome.

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Author:Simon-Djamel Thiberville, Stefan Schilling, Giuseppina De Iaco, Francesco Maria Fusco, Gail Thomson, Helen C. Maltezou, René GottschalkORCiDGND, Hans-Reinhard BrodtGND, Barbara Bannister, Vincenzo Puro, Giuseppe Ippolito, Philippe Brouqui
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-274343
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1186/1756-0500-5-527
ISSN:1756-0500
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23009598
Parent Title (English):BMC Research Notes
Publisher:BioMed Central
Place of publication:London
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2012/12/17
Date of first Publication:2012/09/25
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Contributing Corporation:EuroNHID Working Group
Release Date:2012/12/17
Tag:Communicable diseases; Critical pathway; Diagnostic techniques and procedures; European Union; Infection control; Patient isolation
Volume:5
Issue:527
Page Number:4
Note:
© 2012 Thiberville et al. ; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
HeBIS-PPN:319095053
Institutes:Medizin / Medizin
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 2.0