Member-states to approach the pharmaceutical industry for sufficient stocks of anti-virals, Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, in Cork
Europe does not have a sufficient supply of anti-viral drugs to counter an influenza pandemic which health experts agree could occur at any time, it has emerged.
The disclosure came at a meeting of EU health ministers in Cork yesterday where the Union's preparedness for the next pandemic was discussed.
After the closed meeting the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, who was hosting the meeting, said member-states had agreed to band together and approach the pharmaceutical industry in an attempt to get them to produce sufficient stocks of anti-virals which would enable member states stockpile in readiness for the pandemic.
"There is not a sufficiency of supply in Europe of anti-virals as we speak in terms of an influenza pandemic so I am strongly of the view that we need to, at a pan- European level, develop the capacity to do that with the industry," he said.
Without negotiation with the industry as a group, member-states would be competing with each other to stockpile drugs to treat those who became infected, he said.
He added that while Ireland had purchased some anti-virals this year during the Avian flu outbreak, it, like the rest of Europe, did not have sufficient supplies to be prepared for a pandemic.
He said it could take about six months to develop a vaccine to counter a pandemic.
"Anti-virals are the first point of defence in terms of trying to stem and slow down an influenza outbreak," he said.
"Basically the industry needs certain assurances that if they up capacity significantly to give more coverage in terms of anti-virals they would need certain understandings from the member-states that we would actually buy these medicines and stockpile them.
"Today there was agreement with the Commission's proposal that we would first of all get a common position in terms of what we would want to achieve from an agreement with the pharmaceutical industry and that we should engage with them," Mr Martin said.
Europe has not seen an influenza pandemic for over 30 years but the European Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner, Mr David Byrne, who also attended the meeting, said it was a question of when we have the next pandemic, not if we have one.
The Republic, like many other EU states, has an influenza preparedness plan.
It was prepared in 2001 and in recent months it has been updated by a Department of Health-appointed committee named the National Influenza Pandemic Expert Group.
According to our influenza pandemic plan: "An influenza pandemic would result in a global health and economic crisis, the scale and impact of which would be greater than either of the two world wars fought in the previous century."