Family Clustering of Avian Influenza A (H5N1)

Nevertheless, one cannot exclude underreporting of SAB by EARSS participating hospitals since EARSS is a voluntary reporting system. For example, England reported 18,403 SAB cases or an incidence of 37 SAB per 100,000 inhabitants from April 2002 to March 2003 through its mandatory surveillance scheme (5), whereas an estimate for the United Kingdom from the EARSS database would only give 7,800 SAB cases for 2003. However, it is impossible to determine whether this discrepancy was due to poor voluntary reporting of SAB cases, a lower blood culturing rate in EARSS participating hospitals, or a poorly representative sample of the country’s hospitals. Data from the United Kingdom were excluded from the present study on the basis of the latter possibility; denominator information for <60% of the isolates was available. In conclusion, EARSS is the first comprehensive surveillance system on antimicrobial resistance in Europe. Within certain limitations, EARSS can also provide valuable information on blood-culturing practices and the incidence of SAB in Europe. The system is continuously being improved, and additional information on the representativeness of EARSS data is being collected. This will allow us to improve the quality and accuracy of the reported incidence rates. In the future, the system should allow reporting of similar data for an even larger number of European countries and for additional microorganisms, such as Escherichia coli.