EPIA formed to quantify flu burden in children

The Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research and SDI, a US private-sector health care information company, have formed the European  Pediatric Influenza Analysis group, created to generate data needed to  inform the decision process about pediatric influenza vaccination policy  in individual European countries. Researchers from Denmark, England,  Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Scotland, Spain and Wales are  participating; it is hoped that other countries will also join.

The EPIA was formed to address knowledge gaps highlighted in a recent  European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) report that  concluded that a key barrier to decision-making about pediatric flu  vaccines is the lack of high-quality, European-specific data on disease  burden, especially for young children. It is estimated by the ECDC that  at least 40,000 people die each year from influenza in the European  Union. The EPIA will present the initial results from their research  project at the 27th annual meeting of the European Society for Pediatric  Infectious Diseases in June.

In the 2006 European Journal of Pediatrics article, titled Should  healthy children be vaccinated against influenza?, Terho Heikkinen and  colleagues noted: "in many European and other countries, the discussion  about potential expansion of target groups for annual influenza  vaccination has just started...the development of new vaccination  strategies in any country will require careful evaluation of the  benefits and disadvantages of the intervention with respect to local  factors."