Thematic day on Wastewater and Surveillance in Denmark
Statens Serum Institut connected wastewater stakeholders from across Denmark to disseminate EU-WISH activities and share knowledge on wastewater surveillance across sectors.
Statens Serum Institut (SSI) uses wastewater to monitor diseases in the population. Thursday February 6th, SSI hosted a thematic day with key national stakeholders in the field.
"It is natural for SSI to host such an event because we play an important role in facilitating national collaboration within wastewater-based surveillance, which involves many stakeholders," says epidemiologist Lene Wulff Krogsgaard, one of the initiators of the thematic day.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater-based surveillance was used for the first time to systematically monitor a disease in Denmark. However, the method is also effective for tracking many other diseases – as well as detecting illicit drugs, such as cocaine.
Furthermore, there is ongoing work to analyse wastewater for bacteria resistant to antibiotics, allowing for the monitoring of antibiotic resistance, which the WHO has identified as one of the greatest threats to global public health.
"At SSI, we will continue to use this method to monitor the coronavirus, and we have made significant progress in developing it so that, in the future, we hope to analyze wastewater samples for a range of other diseases as well," says section leader Steen Ethelberg.
Wastewater-based surveillance is an important national monitoring tool, but the method extends beyond Denmark’s borders and has garnered significant international attention, particularly within the EU through the EU-WISH project.
"The EU-WISH project is very much about collaboration between countries, and the European Commission views wastewater surveillance as a strong tool for the future. That is why they have supported this large European collaboration project. We look forward to strengthening our cooperation both nationally and internationally to improve public health through wastewater-based surveillance," says Pikka Jokelainen, head of function at SSI and one of the project’s leaders.
EU-WISH is just one of several EU-funded projects in which SSI is involved.
