EU: The European Commission adopted two plans yesterday to help prepare for major cross-border health emergencies, such as a flu pandemic or a bioterrorist attack.
Both plans aim to strengthen the co-ordination and planning of measures to deal with health emergencies and better identify the role of member states, the EU and the World Health Organisation. They also ask member states to monitor, assess and transmit information on incidents via the EU's early warning and response system.
The commission plans, which are contained in two policy papers published yesterday, are not binding on member states but are expected to guide national health authorities in their own preparedness plans in case of an emergency, such as the recent anthrax attacks in the US, or an influenza pandemic sparked by bird flu.
A key message contained in both plans is the need to extend emergency planning beyond the health sector to include the emergency services, civil protection and the communications sectors, according to health commissioner Markos Kyprianou.
"We must continue to be vigilant and to strengthen and sustain co-ordination in this area. We do not know when a serious public health emergency will arise, but we do know the better prepared we are, the greater the chances of limiting its effect."
The main public health objective of the plans is to minimise the impact of any pandemic outbreak by facilitating mutual aid arrangements between states, such as mobilising of immunised healthcare workers. The plans envisage the creation of a new EU-wide pandemic alert system, which is based on a sliding scale of one to four depending on how widespread and severe a virus outbreak is.
Plans to set up an EU bank of anti-viral vaccines to help tackle a bird flu pandemic in Europe will be discussed at a meeting of EU health ministers on December 9th.
Mr Kyprianou, who met with representatives of the pharmaceutical industry yesterday, said member states need to provide more clarity to the industry on their future orders of seasonal anti-viral drugs to help it boost manufacturing capacity.
The commission is promoting a public-private partnership approach between member states and industry, which involves industry agreeing to increase manufacturing capacity of anti-viral drugs. However, industry has told the commission it needs member states to first provide greater clarity on orders.