In their recent editorial [1] Catchpole and Coulombier pointed out the urgent need of reliable information on infectious disease occurrence among refugees and newly arrived migrants in the European Union (EU), in order to ensure that public health inter- ventions targeting this vulnerable population are rel- evant, proportionate and appropriately targeted. This call for action comes after the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) published an analysis of the burden of infectious diseases among migrant populations based on EU surveillance data [2]. This report highlighted limitations in the data and differences in reporting between countries. In 2015, with the increase in the number of people migrating into the EU, the ECDC published numerous additional documents (expert opinion/rapid risk assessments) on the topic of migrant and refugee health [3]. To guide emergency response, information on epidemic prone diseases among newly arrived migrants has been col- lected in some EU countries for several years through aggregated syndromic surveillance [4]. These data, however, cannot be imported into case-based national and EU surveillance systems.
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