Croatia advances integrated disease surveillance amid WHO concerns over system fragmentation

Croatia is overhauling its fragmented disease surveillance infrastructure through two EU-supported programmes — SUCCESS, which modernises communicable disease notification systems, and CROOH, which builds a coordinated One Health surveillance model across nine zoonotic diseases spanning vectors, environment and animal populations — as campylobacteriosis and salmonellosis continue to dominate the country’s bacterial disease burden with more than 29,000 combined cases recorded over the past decade.

Croatia is seeking to shore up disease surveillance after a World Health Organization document highlighted fragmented systems, slow data sharing and limited resources. The immediate pressure is felt most sharply in foodborne illness: campylobacteriosis and salmonellosis remain the country’s most common bacterial diseases, with more than 16,000 Campylobacter cases and 13,000 Salmonella infections recorded between 2013 and 2023.

Two national projects illustrate the direction of travel. The SUCCESS programme, led by the Croatian Institute of Public Health and co-financed by EU4Health, is intended to modernise the country’s communicable disease surveillance by upgrading notification systems, adding respiratory infection monitoring and building a complementary laboratory layer. The institute says the aim is to improve data quality and analysis while reducing the administrative burden on clinicians.

Separately, the CROOH project is building a coordinated One Health surveillance model for nine zoonotic diseases, ranging from Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever to hepatitis E. It brings together sampling from vectors, the environment and multiple animal populations, with a national database planned to support faster verification and response.

Taken together, the projects suggest Croatia is moving from fragmented oversight towards a more integrated public health infrastructure, though the WHO has made clear the gap between ambition and operational capacity remains substantial.

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