External quality assurance scheme for Streptococcus pneumoniae 2010
Streptococcus pneumoniae causes a wide spectrum of diseases ranging from upper respiratory tract infections to severe invasive disease. Among the activities that ECDC is developing in relation to invasive pneumococcal disease surveillance, the Centre has supported an external quality assurance (EQA) exercise with the aim of improving laboratory capacity for detection, characterisation, molecular typing and antimicrobial susceptibility testing of S. pneumoniae.In April 2010, a collection of six strains of S. pneumoniae and one other microorganism (which could be misidentified as S. pneumoniae) was sent to 27 participating laboratories within the IBD-Labnet surveillance network for quality assurance testing. The participants were requested to test the submitted samples according to their routine standard methods. This report presents the results of this exercise.
