I am pleased to report that the countries of the European Union have made substantial progress in preparing for a pandemic. Markos Kyprianou, Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection has been leading the charge across the twenty-five countries of EU plus, Norway and Iceland. In the Executive Summary of his 2007 Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Report he highlighted our status.
“Since 2005, the EU and all its Member States have made considerable progress in strengthening their preparedness against pandemic influenza. The health sectors in all countries have developed preparedness plans and, at national level, much is being done to make these plans operational. The challenge now lies in maintaining the momentum and further engaging with non-health sector issues, locally and across governments.”
There is a high level of commitment for pandemic preparation within each government across the EU. Preparedness plans have been developed at the union, as well as at the national, regional and local levels. Governments have committed to having plans fully implemented and tested by February 15, 2011. I have seen few concerns in my time serving the EU that have rallied such wide-spread commitment to development and implementation.
Our scientists lead by Zsuzsanna Jakab, Director of the European Union Center for Disease Control and Prevention (EUCDCP) expanded their plan in 2007, given the threat of H5Ni influenza in the world’s bird population. Citizens across the globe began to be highly concerned with the heightened potential for a pandemic. Fortunately the scientific community had already developed a methodology for preparedness assessment review. This was tested during joint missions of both EU and non-EU nations. They followed the template from the World Health Organizations Preparedness Plan.
We now have in place two parallel plans, one to prepare for the yearly worldwide influenza cycle, and one to prepare for a perhaps decades, long pandemic. Monitoring of the yearly influenza situation and reaction to its threats is ongoing. The government and scientific community in member states continue work with the World Health Organization, and the EUCDCP to strengthen our ability to deal with a potential pandemic. Within the next month all member states will have completed and tested a national health sector preparedness plan and it will be operational.
I am confident our hospitals are ready to deliver acute care to those stickered with influenza and treat patients with unrelated conditions. Our pharmaceutical manufacturers are just months away from having the system in place where they will be able to develop a pandemic vaccine within six months of its start, and will be able to have enough doses in production within one year to vaccinate our entire population. In addition, member states are working with manufactures to have large stockpiles of antiviral drugs available.
The military across all EU countries, plus Norway and Iceland have established Pandemic Control Units who can be mobilized within twenty-four hours to investigate initial cases of pandemic influenza. They have field teams in place that can be dispatched to back up local hospitals across their country to quarantine, test, and diagnose pandemic influenza. A unique partnership has been formed between each countries military, national guard, state police, fire, and emergency medical response teams that has included joint training on disease prevention, self-protection, isolation control and panic control. The leadership of each of these groups has developed a top-down plan to implement a desease control system and a bottom-up plan for disease reporting.
The final step in our implementation begins this week. We are working with companies who provide essential services to help them develop a plan to function normally during such a pandemic. We have developed standards for the pandemic protection of their workers and standards for companywide plans to be implemented in the case that some or many of their employees are stricken. We are focusing on industries that provide essential services such as supplies of power, food, and fuel. As soon as plans have been implemented in these industries we will be moving to essential services industries such as banking, communications, and transportation. Finally, we have developed a plan that is implementable by any business to prepare their company to be able to work in such a constrained environment. This plan is provided free-of-charge and can be downloaded from the EUCDCP.
You can see, the EU is well prepared for a potential influenza pandemic. However, we will not rest until this plan has been implemented in every community and in every EU country with an ongoing checks and balances system to make sure it remains up-to-date. For further information on the EU preparedness efforts visit the EU Center for Disease Control and Prevention website.
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