In the viewpoint entitled ‘Potential for greater coherence in EUROPEAN influenza surveillance’ and published in your last edition, EJPH 2010, 20(5):488–9, Johnson H et al. analysed the publically available data on influenza surveillance reported in the European Influenza Surveillance Network (EISN, formerly European Influenza Surveillance Scheme (EISS)) managed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and in the EuroFlu managed by WHO – Europe. The former agency reports data from 27 European Union (EU) countries and two European Economic Area (EEA) countries, and the latter collects data from 53 countries from the WHO European Region (that include the former countries). During the period 2009–10, the authors correctly observed that 7% of the data from the countries reporting in both bulletins were contradictory. The authors suggested some hypotheses to explain these discrepancies, from different data uploaded to different national contact points for reporting in some countries. Both ECDC and WHO – EURO have been aware of such differences. While small, they are being addressed in our ongoing coordination for quality assurance. An important improvement that should lead to a decreased number of these discrepancies is the new reporting technical solution introduced by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (EDCD) and WHO – Europe. As of January 2010 the reporting for the 29 EU/EEA countries is now synchronized and uses a single data entry point for both platforms. In addition, as a further step towards coordinated surveillance of influenza at the European level, in May 2011, ECDC and WHO – Europe will for the first time organize a joint annual meeting of their influenza surveillance network members where the influenza surveillance activities, including the validity and quality of the data and the analyses will be discussed. Beginning with the 2010–11 influenza season WHO – EURO and ECDC are now jointly reviewing weekly bulletins from both agencies, and we are writing joint guidance on human influenza surveillance. Taken together, these activities should improve the quality of the influenza data in Europe in the future.
Conflicts of interest: None declared.