Surveillance and epidemiology of syphilis, gonorrhoea and chlamydia in the non-European Union countries of the World Health Organization European Region, 2015 to 2020

Background: Epidemics of sexually transmitted infec-tions (STI) are a major public health challenge in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region. Aim: We aimed to provide an overview of case report-ing and other surveillance data for syphilis, gonor-rhoea and chlamydia for the non-European Union (EU)/ European Economic Area (EEA) countries of the Centre and East part of the WHO European Region as per clas-sification used by the WHO Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Methods: Data were provided by the surveillance agencies of the Member States for the period 2015 to 2019 through the WHO/Europe Communicable Diseases Annual Reporting Form. We analysed reported cases, explored data reported to the WHO Gonococcal Antimicrobial Surveillance Programme (GASP) and performed a review of publi-cations on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in gonor-rhoea in the period 2015 to 2020 using systematic methodology. Results: From 2015 to 2019, in most of the countries with three or more data points, there was a pattern of decrease in reported syphilis, gon-orrhoea and chlamydia cases, which is in contrast to the EU/EEA. The number of reported cases per 100,000 population was 0.4-26.5 for syphilis, 0-18.5 for gon-orrhoea and 0-43.3 for chlamydia. Four countries reported recent data on AMR in gonorrhoea to GASP, and we identified further publications from Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. Conclusion: We found wide het-erogeneity in reported rates of STI. There is a strong need to improve availability and quality of STI surveil-lance data in the non-EU/EEA countries.