Brussels is seeking a major shift in powers towards the EU’s health agencies, warning that Europe’s faltering approach to the coronavirus pandemic has caused “confusion and distrust”.
The EU commissioner for health, Stella Kyriakides, said the bloc’s lack of readiness for the crisis had meant substandard care for patients and left medics without access to vital resources.
At the height of the first wave of the pandemic, the Italian government hit out at the lack of solidarity within the EU after its urgent calls for medical resources from fellow European governments were ignored.
Kyriakides, a former MP in Cyprus who is also a psychologist with a degree from Reading University, said she believed the pandemic had been a “wake-up call” to EU capitals.
She said: “We have seen in the beginning of this crisis how fragmentation can make member states more vulnerable. We saw that in the beginning, in the first few weeks, the effects of uncoordinated national measures. There was a lack of readiness and preparation.
“And we saw that with the shortfall of medical equipment, testing capacity and coordination in many areas. So this uncoordinated approach, what it directly means is that citizens don’t get the best healthcare.
“It means they don’t have the access that they should have to the medicines they need, to the medical devices and the medical equipment they may need.”
Under a new regulation on serious cross-border threats to health proposed by the European commission on Wednesday, EU member states would be obliged to report on the capacities of their healthcare systems, while national crisis plans would be scrutinised by the bloc’s officials for weaknesses.
The EU would establish a strengthened surveillance system using artificial intelligence to watch out for any outbreaks of disease or weaknesses in healthcare capacity within its territory.
Свежие комментарии