The article presented a study that estimated how often gastroenteritis caused by seven different pathogens actually occurs in seven EU countries. Using information from healthcare records and population surveys, we documented that millions of cases happen each year, resulting in thousands of hospitalizations. To account for cases that never reach official statistics, we developed models that adjusted for under‑diagnosis and under‑reporting. The results revealed large differences between countries, both in how frequently infections occurred and in how they were reported. Campylobacter and Salmonella emerged as the most common pathogens causing gastroenteritis. Importantly, countries that appeared to have the lowest infection rates often turned out to have the highest true burden, simply because fewer cases were captured by surveillance systems.
This article was a key outcome of a long‑term project within the MED‑VET‑NET network, which aimed to measure the burden of infections in a comparable way across EU Member States. The aim was to reconstruct the so‑called “surveillance pyramid,” starting from cases reported to national systems and working backwards by estimating how likely patients were to seek care, be tested, and have positive results reported. From this, we calculated “surveillance multipliers” that showed how many infections in the community corresponded to a single reported case—highlighting how much disease remains hidden from official statistics.