Strasbourg, 26/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the strategy to counter a pandemic of flu in the EU. The MEPs, who take "very seriously" the warnings of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) of a risk of a flu pandemic, call upon the Member States to adopt preparation plans to face possible human contamination. These plans will, amongst other things, allow correct coordination to be arranged between the Member States, determine high-risk areas and population groups to be vaccinated as a priority, and guarantee the fair and general distribution of anti-flu products. These preparation plans should, according to the MEPs, include preventative purchase contracts to guarantee sufficient provision of vaccines and antiviral drugs. The MEPs recommend that the Commission use the Solidarity Fund of the EU as an "instrument of precaution", so that the provision of vaccines will not be insufficient, unfair and late in countries which do not produce them. "We must play the Solidarity card. We must be able to use this fund to order vaccines, buy masks and carry out the necessary screening to avoid panic when and if the time comes", explained Robert Sturdy (EPP-ED, United Kingdom). The European Parliament hopes that vaccination programmes will give priority to people working in poultry farms, and it supports the proposal of the Commission to draft a directive establishing updated Community measures to fight bird flu, stressing the importance of vaccination. The Commission and the Member States must also act at the level of the pharmaceutical sector, in order to create incentives for industry to start increasing their capacity to produce vaccines and antiviral drugs now, to bring down to three months the lead time for a new vaccine, should the H5N1 virus mutate. In order to fight the spread of the bird flu virus, the EU must lend its financial and technical support to the countries which have been the worst hit by the virus, particularly in South East Asia. This region is currently considered to be the main source of contamination, where the risks of "recombination" (a term which replaces "mutation" in the resolution) of the bird and human flu viruses are the highest. The Parliament calls upon the Member States to keep people hoping to visit these countries correctly informed about transmission risks.
The MEPs also hope to step up the Commission's role of coordinator, to enable it to lend its expertise to the Member States in the drafting and updating of their preparation plans, and they call upon the Council to give the Commission a mandate to "take emergency measures, the same day, if ever the EU or its neighbour countries is hit by a flu pandemic". These measures could include quarantine, disinfecting flights from infected regions or restrictions on travel. "Policies are not enough to stop the virus, but we must arm ourselves with the possibility of acting as soon as the virus is declared, which may happen anywhere and at any time", Neil Parish explained. In order to prevent panic among the populations, the Commission is to draft a global communication strategy, jointly with the ECDC.
The talks of the MEPs on Tuesday reflected a paradoxical situation, between a constant need for updated information, and the need to "manage the overload of information", which may create confusion, in the words of John Bowis (EPP-ED, United Kingdom). Some of the MEPs voiced their concern for consumers, among them Luca Romagnoli (independent, Italy), who spoke out against "taking consumers hostage, and making the pharmaceutical multinationals fat", whilst Alessandro Foglieta (UEN, Italy) suggested that poultry be labelled in the same way as beef is, in order to reassure consumers and producers of poultry. John Bowis was shocked by the recommendations of the European Food Safety Agency in Parma about the consumption of raw eggs and poultry meat (see other article): "we cry wolf when there are no risks involved in consuming eggs from the EU, and in any case, meat has to be well cooked to kill off salmonella. It is the duty of an international agency to assess risks and be extremely careful when it makes statements", he said.