The European Travelling donors’ risk assessment tool

Since 2015 the EUFRAT risk assessment tool has been publicly available on the website of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (https://eufrattool.ecdc.europa.eu/). The tool allows quantification of the risk of infectious disease transmission by blood transfusion through donations of residents in an outbreak-affected region, or the risk from donors from a particular country who have visited an outbreak-affected region and donate blood after return in their home country. However, when making decisions on blood safety interventions on a European level, instead of the risk of a specific outbreak for a specific country, an estimate of the risk of transmission for the whole European blood supply is required.

With the emerging threat of arboviral infections in Europe, Sanquin Research received funding from EBA in 2018 to develop a European perspective on emerging infections by developing a model that estimates the risk of arboviral infection transmission by blood transfusion for Europe as a whole. This resulted in an Excel-based risk calculator, the “European Travelling donors’ risk assessment tool” that contains characteristics of all European blood supplies as well as intra-European travel data, obtained from respectively the Council of Europe (EDQM) and EUROSTAT. The calculation method implemented in this tool is derived from the original EUFRAT model but includes a conservative assumption that can be applied for arboviruses, characterized by relatively short periods of infectivity. This assumption simplifies the risk model and estimates the risk without the requirement of specific data on the duration of stay during the travel to outbreak areas.

A scientific paper with details on the model used, its assumptions, and an application to WNV outbreaks in Europe can be found here.

You can download here the following:

• The European Travelling donors’ risk assessment tool
• The user manual for the risk calculator
• The slides of a presentation on the tool

If you have any questions relating to the tool or when applying it, please contact the EBA office.

The development team:

Catherine Garzon

Ryanne Lieshout

Mart Janssen