Assessment of E. multilocularis surveillance reports 2015

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EFSA Panel on Animal and Plant Health (ALPHA)

This report provides an analysis and critical assessment of the sampling strategy, the data collected, the detection methods used and the results of the Echinococcus multilocularis (E. multilocularis) surveillance carried out in Finland, Ireland, Malta, United Kingdom (UK) and Norway in 2014 and included in the 2015 report in the context of Regulation (EU) No 1152/2011 regarding preventive health measures for the control of E. multilocularis infection in dogs. The surveillance aims at detecting the parasite, if present in any part of those countries. However, none of these countries detected any positive samples in the E. multilocularis specific surveillance programme during 2014. The 2014 surveillance reports of the four Member States (MSs) were assessed by checking the description of the surveillance system for completeness against the relevant elements that need to be addressed in assessing the quality of E. multilocularis surveillance reports. The data reported on individual samples were assessed using the raw data submitted by the countries via the EFSA Data Collection Framework (DCF).
Descriptive statistics were computed to check whether the legal requirements had been fulfilled. Under the assumption of an unbiased representative sampling, and considering the sensitivity of the tests applied, three Member States (Finland, Ireland and the UK) and Norway implemented surveillance activities able to detect E. multilocularis at 1% prevalence maximum, with a 95% confidence level, fulfilling the requirement of Regulation (EU) No 1152/2011.The overall Area Sensitivity of the surveillance activity implemented in Malta does not reach the required level of 0.95.