European Monitoring Systems and Data for Assessing Environmental and Climate Impacts on Human Infectious Diseases

Gordon L. Nichols, Yvonne Andersson, Elisabet Lindgren, Isabelle Devaux and Jan C. Semenza
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Gordon L. Nichols: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Tomtebodavägen 11A, Solna, 17183 Stockholm, Sweden
Yvonne Andersson: Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control, 17182 Solna, Sweden
Elisabet Lindgren: Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, 17177 Stockholm, Sweden
Isabelle Devaux: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Tomtebodavägen 11A, Solna, 17183 Stockholm, Sweden
Jan C. Semenza: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Tomtebodavägen 11A, Solna, 17183 Stockholm, Sweden

IJERPH, 2014, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-43

Abstract: Surveillance is critical to understanding the epidemiology and control of infectious diseases. The growing concern over climate and other drivers that may increase infectious disease threats to future generations has stimulated a review of the surveillance systems and environmental data sources that might be used to assess future health impacts from climate change in Europe. We present an overview of organizations, agencies and institutions that are responsible for infectious disease surveillance in Europe. We describe the surveillance systems, tracking tools, communication channels, information exchange and outputs in light of environmental and climatic drivers of infectious diseases. We discuss environmental and climatic data sets that lend themselves to epidemiological analysis. Many of the environmental data sets have a relatively uniform quality across EU Member States because they are based on satellite measurements or EU funded FP6 or FP7 projects with full EU coverage. Case-reporting systems for surveillance of infectious diseases should include clear and consistent case definitions and reporting formats that are geo-located at an appropriate resolution. This will allow linkage to environmental, social and climatic sources that will enable risk assessments, future threat evaluations, outbreak management and interventions to reduce disease burden.

Keywords: surveillance systems; climate change; environmental surveillance; geographic information systems; environmental epidemiology; infectious diseases; outbreaks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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