Assessment of Echinococcus multilocularis surveillance reports submitted in 2014 in the context of Commission Regulation (EU) No 1152/2011

This report provides an analysis and critical assessment of the sampling strategy, the data collected, and the detection methods used in the Echinococcus multilocularis surveillance carried out in Finland, Ireland, Malta and the United Kingdom (UK) and reported in 2014 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 Member States. The 2014 surveillance reports of the four Member States 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 in the context of Regulation (EU) No 1152/2011. The data reported on individual samples were assessed using the raw data submitted by the Member States via the EFSA Data Collection Framework (DCF). Descriptive statistics were calculated to check whether the requirements of Regulation (EU) No 1152/2011 had been fulfilled. None of the four Member States who are operating an E. multilocularis-specific surveillance programme aimed at detecting the parasite, if present in any part of those Member States, has detected E. multilocularis through the surveillance activities reported in 2014. Under the assumption of unbiased representative sampling (in the case of Finland, Ireland and the UK) and unbiased risk based sampling (in the case of Malta) and considering the sensitivity of the tests applied, all four MS have fulfilled the requirement of Regulation (EU) No 1152/2011 to the effect that the surveillance activities should detect a prevalence of E. multilocularis of 1 % or less at a confidence level of at least 0.95.