ESCAIDE

EAN was involved in the organization of the 3rd European Scientific Conference on Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology (ESCAIDE), which took place in Stockholm, Sweden, on 26-28 October 2009.
Five people received the EAN travel grants in order to be able to participate in ESCAIDE. Following the conference, EAN asked people who received them to kindly provide with a short text describing their experience.

Mina Sadeq, Morocco
Attending the ESCAIDE 2009 was an interesting instructive fruitful experience.
An agreement about a twinning project is supported by the European Union and was signed between the Institut de Veille Sanitaire- France and the National Institute of Hygiene (NIH) where I work: the NIH is anticipated to become a National Public Health Institute (NPHI). Attending the ESCAIDE was a wonderful opportunity to have an idea about the different topics the European NPHIs (RIVM, KTL, RKI, etc) work on in order to consider collaborations.
On the other hand, the Moroccan Ministry of Health is developing a FE(L)TP with the coordination of the American CDC-Atlanta and TEPHINET. Pr Rajae ElAouad, Director of the NIH, is in charge. Meeting Dr Dionisio Herrera (TEPHINET), Paul Kelly (TEPHINET), Dr Viviane Bremer (EPIET Chief coordinator-ECDC), Dr Katharina Alpers (German FETP coordinator), and other EPIET fellows enabled me to know more about the EPIET experience, which would help for our FE(L)TP experience.
Before 2005, my field was water chemical pollution. I benefited from trainings related to applied epidemiology and to environmental epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health-Emory University-Atlanta-USA in 2005 and 2006. I have never imagined that a part of my first epidemiologic study will be presented (poster) at such an important conference which is ESCAIDE.

Maria São José Nascimiento & João Mesquita, Portugal
I can truly say that the EAN travel grant was decisive for us to attend the Stockholm ESCAIDE 2009 meeting because it reduced the expenses of our travel and accommodation (for me and my PhD student). It was a great opportunity for us to be able to present in this important European meeting on Epidemiology what to our knowledge constitute the first study of an outbreak of norovirus gastroenteritis in Portugal. The attendance to ESCAIDE 2009 provided us, researchers and academics of the Faculty of Pharmacy of University of Porto, Portugal, not only valuable and up-to-date knowledge of infectious diseases epidemiology in Europe, but also boosted the scarce participation of Portugal in this kind of meetings.

Giovanna Ciaravino, Italy
The ESCAIDE Conference was for me a very interesting experience from different points of view. The conference efficiently highlighted the main public health threats that currently occur both internationally and nationwide. It also contributed to strengthen my knowledge about applied infectious disease epidemiology as well as about the scientific progress achieved so far.
The large number of both oral and poster communication impressed me and the addressed topics variety has encouraged my intellectual curiosity, even if, due to the overlap of the oral communications, sometimes I couldn't listen everything interested me.
Since I'm vet, the information and tools acquired were not always directly applicable in my working field, but however they increased my understanding about epidemiological methods used to approach public health issues.
Finally, ESCAIDE represented for me a great opportunity to share my experiences and to exchange ideas and knowledge as well as it provided a good chance to establish new professional collaborations.