Towards an integrated approach in surveillance of vector-borne diseases in Europe

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has a responsibility to identify, assess and communicate current and emerging dangers to human health from infectious diseases. Vector-borne diseases (VBDs) pose a special challenge to ECDC and national public health authorities due to their complex nature. Interactions between multiple disciplines and responsible health and environmental authorities are often needed for an effective early warning, surveillance and control of vectors and the diseases they transmit. Because many aspects of their complicated transmission cycle are under strong influence of environmental conditions (including weather), adequate risk assessment, early detection, prevention and control of endemic and emerging VBDs may demand approaches other than or in addition to those developed for non-VBDs. This was also recognized by ECDC and is their rationale for funding a network of both medical entomologists and public health experts, VBORNET. The network addresses the prerequisites for vector surveillance activities of arthropods of importance to priority diseases in the European Union. This paper aspires to bridge the gap between entomologists and public health professionals and to facilitate the communication between them. This first strategic paper of the VBORNET project aims to pinpoint the relevance of the different surveillance elements for VBDs important for public health in Europe. Because of the current focus of ECDC on tick-borne diseases, emphasis is placed on VBDs transmitted by ticks in Europe, in particular Lyme borreliosis.Conventionally, public health is defined as the branch of medicine concerned with the prevention and control of disease and disability in a population, and the promotion of physical and mental health of the population on the international, national, or intra-national administrative level. Currently, within the 'one health' initiative, however, medicine is considered more a branch of public health, due