Eurosurveillance - Volume 1, Issue 2, 01 February 1996

On 20 December 1995, the National Network of Public Health (Réseau National de Santé Publique - RNSP) was notified by the Salmonella and Shigella National Reference Centre (Centre National de Référence - CNR) that a greater than expected number of human i

A hospital microbiologist in Spijkenisse, in the south west of the Netherlands - who had recently attended a parasitology course - identified cryptosporidial oocysts in stools from a patient with diarrhoea on 16 August 1995. Re-examination of 89 stool spe

About 50 of the refugees in Dordrecht are from the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former USSR, where diphtheria is rife. Cases have arisen in western Europe through contact with cases from the NIS. No NIS-related cases of diphtheria have been seen

Since children have been vaccinated routinely, diphtheria has been eliminated in most European states and the recent occurrence of a large epidemic in the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former USSR was unexpected. The resurgence of diphtheria in th