About
The European Commission has appointed a European Reference Laboratory to support the control and monitoring of pertussis and diphtheria in the EU/EEA countries: the European Reference Laboratory for Public Health in Diphtheria and Pertussis (EURL-PH-DIPE).
The BEBP unit of Institut Pasteur is part of the EURL-PH-DIPE, which is coordinated by the University of Turku (Finland) and includes five institutes in four countries. The two National Reference Centers hosted in the BEBP unit (for diphtheria and whooping cough, respectively) will contribute their expertise and knowledge to the consortium, thereby supporting international capacity building on pertussis and diphtheria.
Pertussis and diphtheria are serious infectious diseases, but both can be effectively prevented by vaccines. Nevertheless, pertussis and diphtheria are still a matter of concern in the European Union.
The EURL-PH-DIPE aims to maintain and increase the European Union’s capacity to respond to the health threats posed by diphtheria and pertussis. This will be accomplished by developing and harmonizing laboratory capacity in the Member States; improving surveillance, harmonizing methods, providing expertise to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and to a network of national reference centers; training in diagnostics, antimicrobial susceptibility testing and genomic sequence data analysis; and ensuring a rapid response to local and larger-scale outbreaks. A EU-wide seroprevalence study of anti-pertussis, anti-diphtheria and anti-tetanus antibodies will also be performed.
The EURL programme is funded by the European Union and coordinated by the ECDC.
For more information, please see the EURL-DIPE website at https://sites.utu.fi/eudipe/
The official European Commission page on the EURL network is available at https://health.ec.europa.eu/health-security-and-infectious-diseases/surveillance-and-early-warning/eu-reference-laboratories-public-health_en
