The European Parliament (EP) approved this Tuesday measures to strengthen the capacity of the European Union (EU) in the health sector, specifically in the fight against outbreaks of communicable diseases.
MEPs approved the agreement reached with the Council of the EU on the extension of the mandate of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) with 542 votes in favour, 43 against and nine abstentions.
The new legislation aims to strengthen the EU’s capacity to prevent, prepare for and manage communicable disease outbreaks, as well as tackle cross-border threats to health, including clarifying the rules for the joint procurement of medicines and medical devices.
According to the European Commission proposal, the ECDC will cooperate with the Community executive, national authorities, EU bodies and international organizations to ensure complementarity and cohesion between their respective activities.
The ECDC will also closely monitor the capacity of national health systems to detect, prevent, respond to and recover from communicable disease outbreaks, identify gaps and provide evidence-based recommendations.
To generate timely and comparable data, ECDC will also coordinate the standardization of data collection, validation, analysis and dissemination procedures at EU level.
Source: TSF
