THE CARE TELEMATICS NETWORK FOR THE SURVEILLANCE OF INFLUENZA IN EUROPE

Since the 1950s, national networks for the surveillance of influenza h ave been progressively implemented in several countries. New epidemiol ogical arguments have triggered changes in order to increase the sensi tivity of existent early warning systems and to strengthen the communi cations between European networks. The WHO project CARE Telematics, wh ich collects clinical and virological data of nine national networks a nd sends useful information to public health administrations, is prese nted. From the results of the 1993-94 season, the benefits of the syst em are discussed. Though other telematics networks in this field alrea dy exist, it is the first time that virological data, absolutely essen tial for characterizing the type of an outbreak, are timely available by other countries. This argument will be decisive in case of occurren ce of a new strain of virus (shift), such as the Spanish flu in 1918. Priorities are now to include other existing European surveillance net works.