What did you want to address in this study?

There is no standard approach to outbreak investigations for food and waterborne diseases that are often resource-intensive and involve several countries. We present an example of collaboration across countries, rapid information sharing and harmonised data collection templates with some key lessons learned, which could form the basis of standard practices in multi-country outbreaks.

What have we learnt from this study?

Multi-country collaboration can solve outbreaks rapidly, particularly when supported by a supranational organisation. It can help detect outbreaks through sharing of genomic data, conserve resources by distributing the workload between countries and also strengthen conclusions where findings differ compared with individual country investigations.

What are the implications of your findings for public health?

Examples of successful practice discussed in the article, for example the use of a standard line-list template and interview questions, could be replicated in other multinational outbreaks to improve speed and completeness of investigations. Examples of challenges, such as different nomenclature of food items, could be considered for the same reason.