For the last two decades, the Southeast European (SEE) Member States have been working together on pandemic preparedness, influenza surveillance, and immunization. These efforts are led by SECID SEEHN RHDC on communicable diseases surveillance and control.

This Regional Influenza Vaccination Meeting was the third in a row. It was held in Belgrade, on 23-24 October 25, 2023. Its aim was to discuss programs implementation, identify the COVID-19 pandemic impact on influenza vaccination, challenges, possible solutions, recommendations.

Previous meetings back in 2017, and 2019, were focused on operational issues related to the implementation of seasonal influenza vaccination programs, to improve the current strategies, and to overcome challenges by looking into opportunities to ensure affordable prices by improving the process for procuring vaccines and cross-border cooperation.

The Meeting gathered participants from the SEEHN Member States and beyond, joined by representatives of the Task Force for Global Health, US CDC, WHO Europe, Balkan hub, the WHO office in Belgrade and RCC.

The main outcomes of the two days’ discussions are expected to:

▪ identify strategies to foster short-term influenza and COVID-19 vaccine program improvement and increase uptake especially among key target risk groups.

▪ Identify strategies for integration of influenza and COVID-19 vaccination and other immunization or program platforms following a whole life-course approach.

▪ Exchange country experiences and identify country and cross border actions to address possible gaps and challenges related to improve the access to influenza and COVID-19 or other epidemic or pandemic vaccines timely and with affordable prices and also to explore the possibilities for joint vaccine procurement in the SEE Region.

Finally, the Regional Influenza Vaccination Meeting proved the importance of joint work, harnessing regional particularities to strive for higher standards that will affect the livelihoods in the South Eastern Europe.

#SECID #SEEHN

The South East European Centre for Surveillance and Control of Infectious Diseases – SECID, SEEHN RHDC in collaboration with WHO Regional Office for Europe, the Centers of Disease Control, USA and Task Force for Global Health has convened an advanced training workshop on surveillance and causality assessment of adverse events following immunization (AEFI), held in Tirana, Albania in the period 30th November – 2nd December 2022.

SEEHN Secretariat Director, Dr Mira Jovanovski Dasic addressed the audience online. Her message focused on the importance of the topic discussed and also cross-regional collaboration that is important to be kept especially view the immunisation sensitivity.

With the participation of lecturers in person and remotely from WHO Regional Office for Europe, Canada, Germany, Estonia, Serbia, US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, and Uppsala Monitoring Center, during this very intense 3 days training brought great interest and a lot of discussion on the table.

The aim of the workshop was to provide guidance and technical advice to national experts from the Southern-eastern Europe Health Network Member States and guests on strengthening surveillance and causality assessment of AEFIs, by updating the national policies procedures and tools on surveillance of AEFIs to further strengthen the national mechanisms to detect, respond, assess causality and communicate effectively on serious adverse events following immunization.

Participants committed to improve their AEFI systems and causality assessments. By the end of the workshop they came up with a draft plan for actions on improving their systems engaging drugs regulators, immunization programs and other national stakeholders.

IIn addition, multiple cross-cutting issues were identified so that they can be addressed at regional level.