The general objective of EU-WISH is to support participating countries to enhance, extend and consolidate wastewater surveillance for public health. This is a large international collaborative project where the NVI (Veterinærinstituttet) and the Norwegian Institute for Public Health (NIPH, Folkehelseinstituttet) represent Norway.
During the COVID-19 pandemic wastewater surveillance was used by many public health agencies including the NIPH. Testing of wastewater for virus helped with early detection of new virus variants and supported epidemiological models to assess changes in virus transmission. This gave actionable information to NIPH, international and local entities. EU-WISH builds and expands on this.
The focus of EU-WISH is to support activities to enhance and improve national public health wastewater surveillance capacities by strengthening knowledge exchange and sharing best practices based on scientific evidence.
NVI is involved in overarching work (Coordination, Dissemination, Evaluation and preparedness work packages) and technical work (Future priority targets and Technical procedures: sampling and analysis). Specifically, NVI shares its expertise on antimicrobial resistance, emerging pathogens, chemicals and advanced sequencing techniques and data analysis.
During this three-year project NVI will closely collaborates with NIPH to support the development of a Norwegian wastewater surveillance program.
This is a Joint Action following the prescribed Joint Action structure of the EU. This Joint action on wastewater surveillance is part of an EU4 Health Annual Work Program (AWP) in collaboration with the Joint Research Centre (JRC). This work supports Health Emergency Preparedness and Response (HERA).
EU4Health programme 2021-2027 - a vision for a healthier European Union
Partners
The EU-WISH project is coordinated by Staten Serum Institute (SSI) in Denmark and the Hellenic National Public Health Organization (EODY) in Greece. There are 26 countries involved represented by 62 institutions. In Norway, the Norwegian Veterinary Institute (NVI) works together with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) on this project.
