Clostridium difficile: summary of actions in the European Union

Since 2006, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has been addressing the new CDI situation. Considering the worrying evolution of CDI in Northern America, reports of Type 027 CDI outbreaks in Belgium, The Netherlands and the UK in 2005, and the preliminary results of an EU-wide study conducted in 2005 by the ESCMID Study Group for C. difficile (ESGCD), ECDC convened a group of experts consisting of members of ESGCD, epidemiologists from healthcare-associated surveillance networks from the European Union (EU) and from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This ECDC working group recognised the emergence of a new CDI problem in some EU Member States and the potential for spread to other countries and decided to act.