First insight into current wastewater surveillance activities in Europe
The summer 2024 EU-WISH survey reveals funding as the top challenge in the implementation of wastewater surveillance systems in European countries.
EU-WISH (EU-Wastewater Integrated Surveillance for Public Health) is a Joint Action under the EU4Health programme, which supports the policy priority of strengthening the European Union's capacity to prevent, prepare for and respond rapidly to serious cross-border health threats. It has a total of 62 partners from 26 European countries.
As one of the first actions of the consortium, the partner countries were asked to arrange national stakeholder workshops to gather the information required to conduct the EU-WISH T5.1 Mapping Survey.
The survey was aimed to map wastewater surveillance activities at a European level.
The survey consisted of identification and analysis of relevant actors, authorities and stakeholders, and mapping the status of wastewater surveillance, prior experiences, existing data sources, long term strategies, institutional support and international partnerships in each participating country.
Participating countries in the EU-WISH wastewater surveillance mapping survey in summer 2024 in Europe.
To conduct the survey, a task force was established, including 26 national contact points from the beneficiary institutions. The survey was launched on June 15, 2024, and completed on July 31, 2024. Data was collected through interviews with group of experts, individual experts or by other means. An additional EU country was invited to participate, bringing the total number of respondents to 27.
The survey results showed that funding was the biggest challenge in the implementation of wastewater surveillance systems.
More than 70% of participating countries do not currently have a legal framework or regulations governing the operation and implementation of national wastewater surveillance programs. Funding mechanisms or funds allocated for the development, maintenance and expansion of wastewater surveillance infrastructure and activities have been established for a minority of participating countries (n=4), while the majority (n=14) have funding mechanism for only some activities. Seven countries reported that funding mechanisms for wastewater surveillance activities are not in place at all.
Despite these financial and governance constraints, active wastewater surveillance programs were reported.
In 2024, these included wastewater-based monitoring of respiratory viruses, especially SARS-CoV-2 (in 24 countries) but also influenza and other respiratory viruses (14), polio and other non-polio enteroviruses (18), antimicrobial resistance (8), emerging pathogens (6), illicit drugs (11), and chemicals and health related biomarkers (7). Furthermore, the survey respondents indicated that plans are being developed to implement new or additional operative wastewater surveillance systems for many of these targets late 2024 or early 2025 in their respective country.
Targets of operative wastewater surveillance systems in 2024 among participants of the mapping survey in summer 2024 in Europe.
The survey was conducted within the context of EU-WISH task 5.1 (Mapping wastewater surveillance activity), with valuable support of many EU-WISH participants, including not only work package and task leaders but also task participants. In addition, the survey respondents represented not only EU-WISH participants but also included key stakeholders from each participating country, thus providing a comprehensive overview of wastewater surveillance activities in each country.
The initial results of the EU-WISH survey were presented during Capacity Building EU-WISH workshop taking place on 10-11 October 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
This capacity building workshop aims to enhance the development, standardisation, and application of wastewater and environmental surveillance tools. In addition to participants in the EU-WISH Joint Action, there will also be participation by representatives from other countries.
EU-WISH will continue the analysis of the survey mapping wastewater surveillance activities in the coming months.
Further information
Capacity WISH workshop programme
Tasks and participants of EU-WISH WP5: Mapping current actions and future priority targets of wastewater surveillance.
Contact EU-WISH WP5 T5.1 team:
Jose Antonio Baz Lomba (JoseAntonio.BazLomba@fhi.no)
Tuija Leino (tuija.leino@thl.fi)
Tarja Pitkänen (tarja.pitkanen@thl.fi)