By decree published in the Official Gazette this Sunday, a “health risk monitoring and forecasting committee” is created, which will succeed the Scientific Council and will be made up of 19 members, where the new health law is enacted.
The names of its members will be “communicated in the coming days,” the office of Health Minister François Braun said. It is not excluded that certain members of the Scientific Council – whose mission ends on Sunday with the end of the state of health emergency – form part of it.
This committee, responsible for monitoring “health risks related to infectious agents that affect humans and animals, environmental and food contaminants and climate change”, in particular “will issue recommendations when a projection shows a health risk” .
A mission of recommendation
It will also have the mission of “issuing recommendations on the measures planned by the public powers to fight against a health crisis” and “on the vaccination strategy implemented, where appropriate, in the face of a health threat,” according to the decree. Established with the Ministers of Health and Research, it can be seized by one of them or self-seized. Your opinions will be made public.
This committee will be chaired by an authorized personality, appointed by the Ministers of Health and Research, and made up of “16 scientific personalities or health professionals, a representative of patients, a representative of citizens”, as established by the decree.
“In the event of a health crisis”, its president may “propose the call for additional personalities due to their specific experience”. Committee members will be appointed “for a term of two years, renewable once.”
An “independent and transparent” committee
The health minister told France Info on Wednesday that the committee would be “a kind of very high-level command team of scientists” and would be “independent, transparent in its opinions and extremely responsive.” Their missions will go beyond Covid “given the risks of the appearance of other viruses,” stressed François Braun.
“We will have new tools, but we will be surprised by a new virus that will have other properties,” judged the president of the Scientific Council Jean-François Delfraissy, in an interview with the Parisian taking stock of his regrets and his successes in more than two years of the pandemic.
With “specialists in human, animal and environmental health”, the committee will allow “a broader approach”, he added.
Source: BFM TV
