HIV is top priority: EU disease chief

By Martin Banks

Date: 13/01/05

TACKLING a resurgent HIV/Aids epidemic will be the "number one" priority of the new European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), says the agency's director Zsusanna Jakab.

The Hungarian health official is the first national from one of the EU's ten new member states to head an EU agency. Her appointment was confirmed after she appeared before the European Parliament's environment, public health and food committee in Strasbourg on Monday (10 January).

The centre, to be based in Stockholm, will begin work in May with a staff of just 35. "This will rise to 70 next year, when I expect it will be fully operational, and 110 by 2007," she said.

It is partly modelled on the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, which employs 8,000 staff.

Jakab, who worked as a director at the World Health Organization Europe for 12 years, wants the ECDC to be at the hub of a network of national centres in member states.

"Communicable diseases do not respect national borders and nor should preventive and control measures," she said.

She said that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic, which killed more than 8,000 people in Asia, highlighted "gaps" which currently exist in the way the EU and member states respond to global health epidemics.

"My aim is to help close this gap by bringing a more co-ordinated, integrated and harmonised approach to tackling public health issues."

A recent European Commission report shows that HIV infection rates in some east European countries are among the highest in the world. But Jakab says HIV is not just a problem for the so-called new Europe. New cases in western Europe have doubled in the last decade, she said.

Hungarian health official Zsusanna Jakab, the newly appointed director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), said that the agency's 'number one' priority will be tackling a resurgent HIV/Aids epidemic. The agency is to begin work in May 2005.