Sciensano is responsible for the surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases in humans and collects and analyses data from various sources. In addition, Sciensano is the National Reference Centre for laboratory analyses of several of these diseases. Finally, the Quality of Vaccines and Blood Products service is the Belgian Official Medicines Control Laboratory (OMCL) for some vaccines.
The Epidemiology of infectious diseases service collects and analyses data from the various sources. Data sources include laboratory network (including national reference labs), PediSurv, mandatory notifications to the regions, sentinel GPs (SGP),… Centralization and integration of the data is important to follow-up trend and provide advice on health policy. Sciensano also integrates regional information on vaccination coverage (French and Dutch vaccination coverage report) to obtain national statistics.
The Vaccines and blood products quality Service is, for some vaccines, the Belgian Official Medicines Control Laboratory (OMCL) and is responsible for the quality control of vaccines before they can be placed on the European market. This control is carried out by the OMCL, independently of the vaccine manufacturer and for each batch separately. This control consists on the one hand of a critical review of the production data and quality analyses carried out by the vaccine manufacturer and on the other hand of additional analyses carried out by an OMCL. Thus, the Vaccine and Blood Product Quality Department performs various laboratory analyses according to the European Official Control Authority Batch Release (OCABR) guidelines. In addition, the Department also checks whether the production and quality data of the vaccine manufacturer are in conformity with the specifications as approved and recorded in the registration dossier. If a batch complies with all the quality criteria, the Department issues a certificate to the manufacturer, the so-called EU batch release certificate, and the vaccine may enter the European market.
The Service of Veterinary epidemiology offers his scientific support to the Federal Public Service in the writing the Royal/Ministerial Decrees by calculating the sample sizes of animal populations (and geographical distribution) to be tested in changing paradigms : from infection level evaluation (Prevalence) or eradication process, acquiring and maintaining the “free from disease” status. As a validation of the different options in control/eradication strategies, the efficiency of each measure or the global sensitivity of the system to detect a specific disease are calculated. A specific effort is currently made to validate the conformity of the running control programmes with the European Animal Health Law which came into force in April 2021