The contribution of the European high containment laboratories during the 2014-2015 Ebola Virus Disease emergency

Since December 2013, the world has experienced the worst ever epidemic of Ebola virus disease (EVD), which has caused thousands of deaths in several West African countries. When the epidemic began, the European Union (EU) was not unprepared, thanks to the 10-year-long commitment of the European Commission (EC) to fund several networks in the area of highly infectious diseases. The European Network of Biosafety-Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratories (Euronet-P4, later called ENP4-Lab) was one of them; it has been operating since 2004, bringing together the facilities where RiskGroup 4 (RG-4) pathogens such as Ebola virus can be safely handled. In 2010, with the aim of increasing European preparedness in the fight against highly infectious trans-border threats, a new Joint Action was launched, resulting from the union of the networks that had previously worked on the diagnostics of highly infectious viruses and bacteria: ENP4-Lab and EQADeBa (Establishment of Quality Assurance for Detection of Highly Pathogenic Bacteria of Potential Bioterrorism Risk). (...) The authors are grateful to the European Commission and CHAFEA for financially and technically supporting the following Networks: EURONET-P4 2003214, ENP4Lab 2006208, QUANDHIP 2010-21-02, and EMLab (European Mobile Laboratory Project). Part of this work was also supported by the Italian Ministry of Health, ‘Ricerca Corrente’ grants awarded to the ‘Lazzaro Spallanzani’ National Institute for Infectious Diseases-IRCCS, Rome, Italy. info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion