EU disease prevention chief hits back at criticism

The head of the EU's centre for disease prevention and control has put up a robust defence of ithe agency's record in the face of severe criticism from MEPs.

Zsuzsanna Jakab, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, came under fire when she appeared before MEPs on Monday.

The Hungarian outlined the Stockholm-based agency’s performance in the last 12 months and its programme for next year.

The agency detects and analses health threats through surveillance and epidemic intelligence.

She told MEPs that the agency, which has an annual budget of €26m and was launched two years ago, faced a busy period.

It plans to recruit nearly 300 new staff by the end of 2008, will assist member states in implementing new international health regulations, develop “enhanced” surveillance for several diseases and launch a new website.

But her comments failed to satisfy several members of the environment committee with criticism being led by German Socialist deputy Dagmar Roth-Behrendt.

She said: “Being busy is one thing, but being effective is quite another and these plans, as outlined, are unsatisfactory.

“I would like to know, for instance, what the agency plans to do about the problem of hospital infections, and whether member states are doing all they should be doing in terms of tackling communicable disease. If not, the agency should name and shame them,” she said.

Her comments were echoed by Slovakian member Irena Belohorska, who said the agency should be concentrating more on specific health scares, such as bird flu.

In response, Jakab said: “2007 has seen some important milestones, not least in the delivery of our scientific programme, which has enabled us to identify the key challenge Europe faces.

“Concrete results are being achieved, notably, in 2007, the fact that the agency has built a state-of-the-art emergency operation from which it can support the coordination of the EU to multi-country incidents.

“Also, a number of scientific opinions have been produced for member states, most recently on pre-pandemic influenza vaccines.”

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