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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 1999;281:1477-1478.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Berlin—A European equivalent of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is needed to foster more effective monitoring of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases and help train researchers in developed and developing countries, according to proponents of an initiative to establish a "Euro-CDC."

Not so, say dissenters, who assert that a "virtual center without walls" is sufficient to carry out such functions as tracking disease outbreaks and monitoring antibiotic resistance. They favor a network of existing national centers in European Union (EU) member states, using Internet-linked databases for the surveillance of specific infectious diseases.

These sharply divergent views were aired last month by an international panel of scientists at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. The debate comes at a time when EU member states are planning their second health program, which is scheduled to begin next year. The latest changes . . . [Full Text of this Article]