Brussels, 07 May 2002
European experts are divided over the form a newly proposed agency for infectious diseases should take, according to a report from BioMedNet News.
The debate follows an announcement from Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne that the Commission intends to establish a European centre on communicable diseases by 2005.
Specialists disagree over whether the proposed agency should be an advanced, centralised facility or an extension to an existing institute that would simply coordinate a network of national experts.
Speaking at an event on clinical microbiology and infectious diseases in Milan, Italy in April, Matthias Niedrig of Berlin's Robert Koch Institute warned that Europe is not prepared for bioterrorism attacks. 'National institutes have the necessary experience but we need more resources, especially in the area of diagnostics,' he said.
While Niedrig does not favour the creation of a centralised facility along the lines of the US Centre for disease control and prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, he says that Europe should be capable of a CDC-style response. Permanent funding and better coordination are required to achieve this, he says.
Michel Tybayrenc of the French national research laboratories argues, however, that a decentralised system has many inherent weaknesses. He believes that an advanced facility would mean 'many competencies could be shared, with much effort saved.'
Julius Weinberg, a public health physician at London's City University, said the network approach has proved successful in the past. 'Many of the European networks have shown that by combining data from various different countries, they can detect events that would not have been detected any other way,' he said.
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