Preparedness is a key strategic element of an effective response to health threats. However, despite evident improvements in recent years, there is still large evidence of ineffective management of epidemic and pandemic events at any level, as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa recently showed.
Flutrackers is an online platform that gather information about infectious diseases from journals, news sources and citizens around the world. It was started in 2006 by a diverse group of volunteers, initially interested in investigating seasonal influenza, novel influenza, and chikungunya. In later years, we expanded our range by including other health threats such as the Ebola and Zika viruses, and drug resistant bacteria.
ECDC will held a scoping meeting to identify key gaps in applied preparedness research in Europe, and to identify strategies to promote interactions between research and practitioner communities. The findings of the meeting will inform ECDC activities in the coming years.
Key discussion points for this Scoping Meting include:
Declaring an emergency is a dirty work, but someone has to do it. When facing a serious threat to global public health, even if complete evidence is lacking, someone has to take the responsibility to push the red button that activates a chain of coordinated actions (such as cooperation among states and research on vaccines). Choosing to do this, the risk of giving a false alarm is unavoidable.
The recent case of the French parents who risked a jail sentence for refusing to vaccinate their children reignited the intense debate over mandatory vaccinations, whose efficacy as an instrument to maintain high level of vaccine coverage has been questioned.
WHO. 2015 Dec 18. Pandemic influenza preparedness: sharing of influenza viruses and access to vaccines and other benefits - Report of the Special Session of the Pandemic Influenza. Preparedness Framework Advisory Group
The European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research cofunds ASSET project, a resource in case of infectious threats.
ASSET project provides public health authorities with resources, suggestions and tools that could help to draw and review pandemic and epidemic preparedness plans, both national and transnational - introducing Science-in-Society issues, such as those related to ethics and gender.
It makes available a qualified and diverse network of experts in disaster management, public health and risk communication.
A bridge between stakeholders, public health authorities and general public, also through social media in order to encourage listening, improve dialogue, facilitate mutual learning and enhance mobilization.
Just in case.
During the 2009 A(H1N1) pandemic, the issue of how many deaths were associated to the emerging virus was one of the main causes of misunderstanding between authorities and the general public, which ended in a worrying lack of trust. The pandemic, initially presented as a potential serious threat, in the end was no more severe than a common seasonal flu. Unfortunately, even nowadays, it is difficult to ascertain if and how much H1N1 pandemic was different from any other seasonal flu, based on official data.
The consideration of sex and gender are not the most obvious issues that come to mind when discussing epidemics and pandemics. However, sex and gender have an important impact on these issues, since barriers to pandemic preparedness and risk behaviour can often be better understood when viewed from a sex and gender perspective.
Both gender and sex have an impact on experiences and behaviours relating to pandemics, epidemics and vaccination. The difference between sex and gender can be confusing, and the two words are often incorrectly used interchangeably.
A MMLAP (Mobilization and Mutual Learning Action Plan) Area has been activated within the Community of Practice of the ASSET website: this area is planned to stimulate the debate between the ASSET consortium and other MMLAP projects on the Best practices to develop and implement the communication between science and society.
