Members of the ECOM project will gather for a final symposium on November 10th 2015 in Stockholm, prior to the European Scientific Conference on Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology (ESCAIDE). ECOM – which stands for Effective Communication in Outbreak Management – is an EU funded project that aims to develop strategies for improving risk-communication during major pandemic outbreaks in Europe.
The 2015 ESCAIDE conference will take place on 11-13 November 2015. It will be hosted at the Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre, in the heart of the city. The ESCAIDE programme will offer a huge range of exciting presentations, posters, seminars and workshops on all aspects of infectious disease prevention and control.
Italy is facing a serious drop in vaccine coverage, which are falling close to – and in some cases even below – the target set by the Minister of Health in the current national plan for vaccine prevention. This is a serious problem for public health, since, for infections transmitted from man to man (tetanus being an exception), a high coverage is necessary to protect those people that cannot be vaccinated either because of their age or because of clinical reasons, such as for cancer therapies, through the mechanism of herd immunity.
Technology and top-down political decisions are not enough if Europe wants to become a low-carbon society. Broad civil society participation is key to this transition. The European Commission has acknowledged that the governance process of the new Energy Union should “involve an energy dialogue with stakeholders to inform policy-making and support active engagement in managing the energy transition.”
On September 17, 2015, the NEN (Netherlands Standardization Institute) will host the workshop ‘Ethical Impact Assessment for Research and Innovation’. The Workshop is organized by the SATORI project and will assess the feasibility of European consensus for such a framework.
Infectious diseases not only impact on people’s health conditions, but also on several socio-economic aspects. Facing epidemics and pandemics is thus a major challenge for both science and society, a challenge that requires a multidisciplinary approach. Within this context, the first ASSET Summer School will be held in Rome, on September 21-24, at the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS).
Smith RD, Keogh-Brown MR, Barnett T, Tait J. BMJ. 2009 Nov 19;339:b4571.
Objectives: To estimate the potential economic impact of pandemic influenza, associated behavioural responses, school closures, and vaccination on the United Kingdom.
Design: A computable general equilibrium model of the UK economy was specified for various combinations of mortality and morbidity from pandemic influenza, vaccine efficacy, school closures, and prophylactic absenteeism using published data.
Increasingly, public health organisations and the public are grappling with how to filter out myth and misinformation online to find trustworthy, evidence-based health information.
Experts, skills and quick responses
Recent experiences during H1N1, Ebola and measles outbreaks have seen public health organisations begin to change their approach to providing health information online. Governments and public health organisations have begun to use three broad categories of online response:
A conference about the socio-economic impact that epidemics and pandemics may have will be held in Milan, October 27, with the collaboration of ASSET project. The event was inspired by the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which brought significant consequences on the economic and social structures of the three countries involved by the epidemic.
