Defining disease burden and making decisions on seasonal influenza vaccination (2014)

This report summarizes the meeting on defining disease burden and making decisions on seasonal influenza vaccination that was held in Tbilisi, Georgia from 25–29 August 2014.

The workshop was attended by some 50 people, mainly national influenza surveillance personnel, national immunization programme managers and chairs and secretaries of national immunization technical advisory groups from seven countries – Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.

The trainers came from the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in the Netherlands, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Preventioni (CDC), Research Institute on Influenza, Russian Federation and Public Health England, United Kingdom. Three and a half days of the five-day training were devoted to training national surveillance personnel in the use of the WHO “Manual for estimating disease burden associated with seasonal influenza in a population”.

The remaining day and a half other topics were addressed such as evidence-based decision-making, appraising the economic cost, affordability and financial sustainability of influenza and sharing best practice and learning from other countries’ experiences.