On February 24^th, 2017 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina SECID organised the Annual Influenza Meeting on “Improving Influenza Surveillance and Pandemic Response in SEE Countries”. This event took place in the framework of the five year project Surveillance and Response to Avian and Pandemic Influenza supported by CDC, Atlanta, USA.

The aim of the meeting was to present the achievements and challenges of influenza surveillance and pandemic preparedness in SEE countries.

The objectives were:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO EURO) in collaboration with South East European Centre for Surveillance and Control of Infectious Diseases (SECID), have organized a Workshop on Monitoring and Evaluation of Surveillance Systems with Emphasis on Influenza Sentinel Surveillance, in Countries of South East Europe from 20-23 February 2017, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On 13 February 2017 in Tirana, Albania took place the National Workshop ‘Time to Detect and Time to Respond’. This event was organized by Southeast European Centre for Surveillance and Control of Infectious Disease (SECID) in cooperation with Institute of Public Health, (IPH) Tirana. The workshop was organized in the framework of ‘Improving early detection and response of country and cross border diseases, events and risks by digitalization of priority surveillance sources’, supported by Skoll Global Threats Fund – SGTF USA. 

During February-March 2017 epidemiologists’ teams of SECID and Institute of Public Health (IPH) of Albania conducted field trips in Districts: Fier, Kukes, Lezha, Rreshen, Shkodra, Tirana and Vlora. Epidemiologists of IPH organized  meetings with  the epidemiologists in Public Health Directories, as well as in Health Centers and Hospitals. These activities were supported by Skoll Global Threats Fund (SGTF).

The aim of these field trips was:

-to revise the surveillance system of infectious diseases and reporting forms