Epidemic intelligence data of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, European Region, 2012 to 2022: a new opportunity for risk mapping of neglected diseases

Background: The Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) system, jointly developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission and various part-ners, is a web-based platform that facilitate the moni-toring of information on public health threats in near real-time from thousands of online sources. Aims: To assess the capacity of the EIOS system to strengthen data collection for neglected diseases of public health importance, and to evaluate the use of EIOS data for improving the understanding of the geographic extents of diseases and their level of risk. Methods: A Bayesian additive regression trees (BART) model was implemented to map the risk of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) occurrence in 52 countries and territories within the European Region between January 2012 and March 2022 using data on CCHF occurrence retrieved from the EIOS system. Results: The model found a positive association between all temperature-related variables and the probability of CCHF occurrence, with an increased risk in warmer and drier areas. The highest risk of CCHF was found in the Mediterranean basin and in areas bordering the Black Sea. There was a general decreasing risk trend from south to north across the entire European Region. Conclusion: The study highlights that the information gathered by public health intelligence can be used to build a disease risk map. Internet-based sources could aid in the assessment of new or changing risks and planning effective actions in target areas

Interfacing a biosurveillance portal and an international network of institutional analysts to detect biological threats

The Early Alerting and Reporting (EAR) project launched in 2008, is aimed at improving global early alerting and risk assessment and evaluating the feasibility and opportunity of integrating the analysis of biological, chemical, radio-nuclear (CBRN) and pandemic influenza threats. At a time when no international collaborations existed in the field of event based surveillance, EAR’s innovative approach consisted in the involvement of both epidemic intelligence experts and internet-based biosurveillance system providers in the framework of an international collaboration called the Global Health Security initiative that involved the Ministries of Health of G7 countries and Mexico, the World Health Organization and the European Commission. The EAR project pooled data from seven major internet-based biosurveillance systems onto a common portal that was progressively optimized for biological threat detection under the guidance of epidemic intelligence experts from public health institutions in Canada, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The group became the first end users of the EAR portal, constituting a network of analysts working with a common standard operating procedure and risk assessment tools on a rotation basis to constantly screen and assess public information on the web for events that could suggest an intentional release of biological agents. Following the first two-year pilot phase, the EAR project was tested in its capacity to monitor biological threats proving that its working model was feasible and demonstrating the high commitment of the countries and international institutions involved. During the testing period, analysts using the EAR platform did not miss intentional events of biological nature and did not issue false alarms. This article provides, through the findings of this initial assessment, insights on how the field of epidemic intelligence can advance through an international network and more specifically on how it was further developed in the EAR project. JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen