European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

ECDC–EMCDDA cooperation

The EMCDDA and ECDC have a common interest in monitoring, communicating on, and preventing the spread of drug-related infectious diseases in Europe. While ECDC analyses trends in these diseases across the whole population, the EMCDDA, as a specialised information provider on drugs, focuses on specific drug-related risk groups such as injecting drug users.

Joint projects to prevent and control drug-related infectious diseases are facilitated due to a Cooperation agreement signed in Lisbon in June 2007 by the Directors of the EMCDDA and ECDC.

The cooperation between the two agencies on drug-related issues takes place through knowledge exchange and the sharing of best practice. The agencies cooperate in the collection, analysis and dissemination of data and in the exchange of expertise via technical meetings and contacts between staff. These include among others, close collaboration on the monitoring of the seroprevalence of HIV, HCV and HBV among injecting drug users, behavioural surveillance among IDUs, monitoring the implementation of the Dublin Declaration on Partnership to fight HIV/AIDS in Europe and Central Asia and joint publication.

In 2011 the EMCDDA together with ECDC published joint European guidelines on the prevention of HIV and other infections among drug injectors, and performed a joint rapid risk assessment on ‘HIV in injecting drug users in the EU/EEA, following a reported increase of cases in Greece and Romania’.