Prevalence of hospital-associated infections can be decreased effectively in developing countries.

Background: Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) are an important public health problem worldwide. Little information is available from African countries, but published data show that the burden of HAI is greater in Africa than in developed countries. In 2002, the World Health Organization (WHO) published guidelines for preventing HAI.

[A possible scenario of pandemic influenza in Italy].

An influenza pandemic is expected to occur and will require timely countermeasures. Based on analysis of past influenza epidemics, a deterministic model was developed to estimate the expected number of cases (over 12 million), medical consultations (over 5 million), hospital admissions (over 220,000) and deaths (over 43,000) in the absence of public health interventions. The adoption of available measures would reduce the number of cases by about 22%, hospitalizations by 20%, and deaths by 28%.

Resurgence of pertussis in Europe.

Background: A resurgence of pertussis has been observed in Canada, the United States and Australia since the 1980s, but inconsistent data are currently available for Europe. The objective of this paper is to describe the epidemiology of pertussis in Western European countries to discuss future vaccination strategies.

Methods: The European Community funded a network for the epidemiologic surveillance of measles and pertussis in 1998.