Wastewater-Based Public Health Surveillance to be Developed in the EU Member States - THL Involved in the Project
THL (Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare) is participating in the new EU-WISH project, which aims to improve and delevop the use of wastewater surveillance and collaboration in public health monitoring.
This will strengthen the ability of EU countries to prepare for and respond to serious cross-border health threats. The goal is that in the future, more and more countries will utilize wastewater surveillance as part of public health promotion and monitoring.
Project Objectives:
- Create and collect best practices on how wastewater surveillance can support public health monitoring in Europe.
- Define and prioritize the variables to be analyzed from wastewater.
- Develop and harmonize epidemiological and laboratory technical methods.
- Improve the dissemination, communication, and integration of wastewater-based information with other data sources.
- Develop national wastewater surveillance systems.
The project covers several areas of wastewater surveillance, including the surveillance of respiratory viruses, environmental monitoring of antibiotic resistance, polio surveillance, monitoring of new infectious disease threats, and chemical and drug surveillance in wastewater.
THL is responsible for a work package in the project that maps the current state of wastewater surveillance in the European Union and creates criteria for prioritizing wastewater surveillance. These criteria include the public health variables to be monitored, their monitoring frequency, and the population coverage of the surveillance.
"The final outcome of the project is hoped to be the integration of wastewater surveillance with other public health monitoring systems. Such systems include various health registers, healthcare burden indicators, and in Finland, the national infectious disease register," says THL's Chief Specialist Tarja Pitkänen.
The project is funded by the European Union's health program EU4Health.
Further information
EU-Wastewater Integrated Surveillance for Public Health
Tarja Pitkänen
Chief Specialist
THL
Phone: +358 29 524 6315
[email protected]
Teemu Gunnar
Team Leader, Chief Specialist
THL
Phone: +358 29 524 8425
[email protected]
