Does Europe need centralized infectious-disease monitoring, as the US has in its Centers for Disease Control?
Many observers feel it is woefully unprepared for bioterrorist attack, but they disagree about whether to centralize or simply network. Spurred by the recent anthrax attacks in the United States, the European Commission’s Commissioner for Public Health and Hygiene, David Byrne, has visited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta to view its operations first-hand. The trip clearly left a lasting impression: Byrne announced plans for the new center on 15 April to delegates attending the European Regional Red Cross and Red Crescent Conference in Berlin. The center aims to improve and coordinate surveillance for infectious disease in Europe, according to spokesman Thorsten Muench. In an editorial in Eurosurveillance in December, Byrne stated that at present Europe’s resources and procedures were “woefully inadequate” to cope with an act of bioterrorism. “I am working to establish a European Centre on Communicable Diseases (ECCD) which should become operational in 2005. O
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