New EU health agancy opens

A new EU agency for disease prevention and control opens its new headquarters just north of Stockholm in Sweden today.

The agency will mainly focus on communicable diseases and outbreaks of diseases of unknown origin, but it will also assist in the work on monitoring and preparedness planning against bioterrorist attacks, according to the EU Commission.

The building on the campus of the Karolinska institute will be equipped with state of the art communication technologies to enable the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to assist in the co-ordination of the Europe-wide response to major disease outbreaks.