Brussels, 27/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - Most European Union Member States do not have adequate vaccines or response strategies to cope with a mass bio-terrorism attack using diseases such as smallpox, George Gouvras, in charge of the European Commission's task force, declared in substance the day after the attacks of 11 September.
According to the text of a speech at a health conference in Austria, reported on by Reuters, Mr Gouvras mainly pointed out that most governments are counting on national first generation vaccine reserves to face such an eventuality, but that these vaccines do not meet current manufacturing quality standards. He also pointed out that few governments seemed to have planned the purchase of second generation vaccines once available, and that national strategies in response to smallpox attacks do not foresee scenarios requiring mass vaccination, although many governments have plans that would allow the whole population to be protected. The head of the task force said, moreover, that relevant EU ministers had rejected the idea of creating a central vaccine reserve: "There is no agreement at present as to the need for a (European) Community-level stockpile of any medicines at any time, with an appreciable number of Member States feeling this is premature". The idea of setting up an EU consortium to buy vaccines and antibiotics had also come to nothing. According to European sources, some Member States fear they would be left without any vaccine under their own control. In addition to the question of national sovereignty, questions about who would produce centrally-held vaccines and where they would be stored were further obstacles. Despite the above reservation, Mr Gouvras felt that Member State governments would cooperate, and specified that they are "taking steps to share data from national surveillance systems and information on possible outbreaks of certain food and waterborne diseases, and agreed to hold exercises to test current response plans". They would also develop an "incident scale" to indicate the seriousness of an attack and agree on how to isolate people who had been infected.