Influenza as an issue on the agenda of policy makers and government representatives. What can we do? What do we need?

Abstract

Influenza vaccinations and antiviral drugs are the foundation of epidemic and pandemic preparedness, but only close collaboration between public health authorities and industry can achieve the necessary production levels and ensure the smooth distribution necessary to protect European citizens from this public health scourge. To focus the minds of all public health stakeholders, ESWI has translated these simple facts into clear achievable goals: it recommends that EU governments vaccinate one-third of their populations by 2010 and stockpile antiviral drugs for 20% of their citizens while promoting public-private partnerships. The scientific justification behind this objective is easily understood namely that while the annual flu shot protects against three viral strains,the pandemic vaccine will focus on only the one highly lethal virus. As a result if countries succeed in meeting the target to vaccine one-third of the EU-25 population with a trivalent vaccine, sufficient monovalent pandemic vaccine could be produced to vaccinate almost the entire EU-25 population at least once. Achieving these objectives would go far to containing the pandemic and ensuring necessary treatment to avoid needless deaths and social and economic disruption. It would also signal that influenza preparedness had become part of the European mindset. Relying on the technique of force-field analysis organised by professional facilitators the session asked government representatives and policy makers to identify existing factors that either provide support for the objectives or hinder progress.