Rising trends of HIV, gonorrhoea, and syphilis in Europe make case for introducing European surveillance systems

The prevalence of gonorrhoea and syphilis, and that of HIV infection among heterosexuals, has been increasing in many European countries since 1995, and surveillance of sexually transmitted infections other than HIV should be introduced at a European level, according to an article published in the BMJ last week (1) The authors studied new diagnoses of HIV infection reported by the 10 west European countries collaborating with the European Centre for the Epidemiological Monitoring of AIDS (EuroHIV, http://www.eurohiv.org/). For gonorrhoea and syphilis, they consulted published annual reports from national surveillance centres, and conducted a systematic literature search of published papers.