President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced the creation of the new office for respond to the future pandemics – Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority – HERA as the European Commission reported.
“To improve our forecast we will create a new European Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority, HERA for short. HERA will focus on next crises, and if possible, avert them,” the message said.
Von der Leyen explained that the governments of the European countries are not able to stop the coronavirus pandemic on their own and HERA would provide the possibility of the declaration of the emergency all over the EU.
Moreover, HERA will work with all relevant partakers – from concept up to the implementation of the therapy methods, vaccines and technologies.
“This would trigger greater coordination among Member States, joint procurement of medical equipment, and the deployment of EU Outbreak Assistance Teams,” she added.
Earlier, the European Commission explained what it would do with more power over health policy. he EU would be able to declare its own health emergencies independent of the World Health Organization; create EU-wide pandemic preparedness plans; develop a new agency for health emergencies; require countries to submit more health data (for example, hospital bed availability and critical-care capacity); allow the EU’s infectious disease agency to actually make policy recommendations to member countries; and task the EU’s medicines agency with managing shortages of medicines and medical devices.
As we reported, the World Health Organisation (WHO) asked world leaders to prepare for the next pandemic.
#Covid latest update (December 2, 9 am, Kyiv time) pic.twitter.com/Id6qjEXMDq
— 112 News (@112NewsFeed) December 2, 2020
