Commission warned over health threats

The European Commission must do more to help the EU manage global health threats, according to the chairman of the European Parliament’s committee on environment, public health and food safety.

A report from Miroslav Ouzký, Czech centre-right MEP, on new international health regulations (IHR) will be discussed in Parliament next Thursday (6 September).

The report asks the Commission to draw up new guidelines for detecting and assessing health threats, as well as programmes to tackle health threats including antibiotic resistance and hospital infections.

It also says that the Commission needs to explain how the European Centre of Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) can help member states apply the IHR.

The regulations set up systems for reporting and management of health threats across the 193 World Health Organization (WHO) countries, after a 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) left hundreds dead around the world. "SARS was a wake-up call for all of us," said Margaret Chan, WHO director-general. Influenza now poses the greatest risk of a global pandemic, according to Chan, and "implementation of the IHR will help the world to be better prepared for [this] possibility".

Markos Kyprianou, the European health commissioner, has asked member states to implement the IHR as quickly as possible and certainly ahead of the 2016 deadline announced by the WHO.

"The recent past has seen the emergence of new disease challenges," says the Ouzký report. A WHO report last week (23 August) said that at least 39 new pathogens, including HIV and SARS, had been identified over the last 40 years.

But making the IHR work properly, according to Ouzký, "will require close co-ordination between the Commission and member states".

The ECDC was set up in 2005 to help Europe deal with infectious diseases like influenza and measles. The EU also has an internal early warning and response system to manage the same problems.

But the IHR cover health threats from chemicals and radioactivity, as well as these traditional illnesses.

Commission officials said that the main actions envisaged by the Ouzky report were part of current Commissions plans on IHR. These include a review of the legal grey area created by the broad scope of the WHO’s definition of health risk.

A recommendation on patient safety and healthcare infections is expected next year. A review of the ECDC mandate has also just begun, creating the possibility of changes from 2009.

An ECDC representative said that the agency was working with the Commission and national governments to find ways of linking the IHR with the European early warning system and would be happy to develop any other implementation guidelines requested by member states.

The European Commission must do more to help the EU manage global health threats, according to the chairman of the European Parliament’s committee on environment, public health and food safety.