Weekly releases (1997–2007) - Volume 12, Issue 17, 26 April 2007

In the second half of 2006, two vaccines against rotavirus infections and one against human papillomavirus (HPV) infection were granted licensing authorisations by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA).

An outbreak of Clostridium difficile infection in Stoke Mandeville hospital in south-east England [1] in 2004/2005 was primarily due to a new and possibly more virulent strain known in the United Kingdom (UK) as PCR ribotype 027. Coinciding with this outbreak, a surveillance programme of C. difficile isolates from symptomatic patients in England with additional results of outbreak investigation requests to the Anaerobe Reference Laboratory (ARL) in Cardiff has established the true extent of its spread throughout British hospitals.

We report the first documentation of C. difficile 027 in Ireland from a patient with diarrhoea transferred from a hospital in the United Kingdom (UK). In addition, we report two clusters of C. difficile ribotype 027 in two hospitals in Ireland.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is inviting applications for a wide range of positions, including the Head of the ‘Risk Assessment’ Department.