Weekly releases (1997–2007) - Volume 5, Issue 45, 08 November 2001

In France, the Institut de Veille Sanitaire (InVS) is part of the national plan (BIOTOX http://www.sante.gouv.fr/htm/dossiers/biotox/index.htm) against bioterrorism. The plan describes healthcare delivery services that would be needed in the event of a bioterrorism attack, contingency plans (for treatment and prophylactic protocols, stocks of vaccines, etc), how laboratory capacity can be reinforced, and how surveillance activities should be strengthened.

The rapid spread of HIV-1 infection in Russia has serious implications for the control of tuberculosis (TB) epidemics in the country, according to the authors of a research letter published in the Lancet (1). Aggressive prevention measures must be taken quickly if a public health disaster is to be avoided. Since October 1999, the administrative district (oblast) of Orel in Russia has been the site of a project for TB control by directly observed treatment, short course (DOTS) (http://www.who.int/gtb/dots/), organised by the World Health Organization (WHO).

In May this year, Eurosurveillance Weekly reported on the occurrence of two cases of poliomyelitis in Bulgaria (1). These cases were important because they were the first of the disease in Bulgaria since 1991 and in Europe since 1998, and might therefore have constituted a setback for the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region, which was on track for certification of polio eradication (2). The patients – two children of Romany origin – were infected with a wild poliovirus closely related to a strain isolated from India in July 2000.