Surveillance of infections diseases and microbiological expertise.

Public health surveillance, detection of threats to health, outbreaks and a pplied research in the field of infectious diseases should rely on state of the art epidemiological and microbiological expertise. In most European co untries and North America, where public health surveillance is the most dev eloped, the epidemiological and laboratory expertise is often shared by the same institute. In France these two complementary activities are separated . The laboratory work is done in National Reference Centres (NRC), which ar e coordinated by the Ministry of Health, whereas the epidemiological survei llance is coordinated by the Institut de la Veille Sanitaire (InVS). Howeve r NRC and the IVS collaborate very closely either for outbreak investigatio n, surveillance and applied research. (C) 2000 Editions scientifiques et me dicales Elsevier SAS.