Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-25-Speech-2-036"
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"en.20051025.4.2-036"2
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". – Mr President, the theme of this debate is, I believe, that we want a sense of urgency, not a sense of panic. That applies to the Commission and to Member States.
I was pleased to hear that we have had a simulation exercise. As I understand it, one of the problems found was the overload of information. I would be interested to hear how that is being managed.
What we really need for the public, who are beginning to panic, is clarity. They need to be informed and reassured. They need to understand the difference between winter flu – which is not what this debate is about – and avian flu – which is not what this debate is about, even though 67 people have died from it, all working or living with birds and poultry in Asia.
It is the combination of those factors which could lead to a pandemic flu, because it mutates from human to human. It has not happened yet, but our resolution must be to ‘prepare, prepare, prepare’! The key is clearly vaccines, and it is the new vaccines we will need, once we know the strain.
We need capacity and speed. Last week we heard from the WHO that world capacity for producing vaccines is only 300 million doses a year. My own country – the United Kingdom – is going to place an order for 120 million doses. If it does, then where are the vaccines for everyone else? It is not possible without a dramatic expansion of production capacity.
As for speed, six to eight months under the egg-based vaccines is not good enough. We need to look at the cell-based vaccines of one month and even the possibility of DNA vaccines, which could be as low as one month, but still need a lot of development.
We need that central supply to which the Commissioner referred, because it must be said that no Member State is going to give up its own supplies when the pandemic hits a less-prepared country inside or just outside the European Union. I believe we need central supplies under the Solidarity Fund which he and the ECDC can then direct swiftly to where they are needed, so that we can smother the outbreak and prevent it hitting the rest of us even more seriously.
Lastly, we need that information from all Member States in complete form – the stocks, antivirals, vaccines, masks, the health checks at ports and the quarantine facilities – in order to know that we are genuinely prepared against this threat throughout the European Union."@en1
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