Large European project to develop wastewater monitoring for use throughout Europe

The Statens Serum Institut (SSI) is leading a newly launched, major EU project aimed at further developing disease surveillance using analysis of wastewater. The hope is that within a few years, by systematically examining samples of wastewater, it will be possible to relatively easily measure the occurrence of a wide range of diseases in European countries.

"During the Covid-19 pandemic, many countries have used wastewater monitoring to measure the occurrence of Covid-19. It would, of course, be very valuable if these systems could be expanded to include many more infectious diseases. And at the same time, use comparable methods across EU countries. And that is precisely what the project aims to do," says Steen Ethelberg, professor and Section Leader at SSI and one of the project's leaders.

Disease surveillance is necessary for disease prevention and to be able to react quickly when there are signs of new epidemics. However, it is difficult to get an accurate and up-to-date picture of which infections are on the rise or declining across the EU – simply because the individual countries' healthcare systems and surveillance systems are very different. Wastewater analysis offers to provide a more objective picture.

"The advantage would be that one could compare the results between countries and quickly get an overview of which diseases are circulating in the EU area. The European Commission sees wastewater monitoring as a powerful tool for the future and has therefore supported this large European collaboration project, which we have chosen to call EU-WISH," says Steen Ethelberg.

EU-WISH is an abbreviation for Wastewater Integrated Surveillance for Public Health in Europe, and the project runs for three years. It is led by SSI in collaboration with the Greek public health institute, EODY. Wastewater monitoring is a new technology, and is currently undergoing rapid technical development. So the main purpose of the project is to coordinate the technical development happening in the individual countries and to gather the knowledge which is being created for the common good.

"The EU-WISH project is very much about collaboration between countries. We were therefore very pleased that our kickoff meeting in Athens this week managed to bring together colleagues from all 26 countries participating in the project. And especially to see how much enthusiasm there was for the project among the participants - it bodes well for future collaboration," says Pikka Jokelainen, Head of Function at SSI and one of the project's leaders.

More information about EU-WISH can be found on the project's website.