This is the end of the Scientific Council. After more than two years of existence, the body created to support public decision-making in the fight against Covid-19 will be replaced by a “health risk monitoring and forecasting committee”. This new body was created by decree published in the official diary this Sunday, when the new health law is enacted.
“A commando team of very high level scientists”
The “health risk surveillance and anticipation committee” will be made up of 19 members. Their names will be “communicated in the coming days,” said the cabinet of Health Minister François Braun.
It 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 patient representative, a citizen representative”. It is not excluded that certain members of the Scientific Council – whose mission was interrupted on Sunday with the end of the state of health emergency – are part of it.
“In the event of a health crisis,” its president may “propose calling additional personalities for their specific experience.”
Committee members will be appointed “for a term of two years, renewable once.” The health minister told franceinfo on Wednesday that the committee would be “a kind of command team of very high-level scientists.”
Missions that go beyond Covid-19
Unlike its predecessor, the Scientific Council, the committee’s missions will go beyond Covid, stressed François Braun. It will be responsible for monitoring “health risks related to infectious agents affecting humans and animals, environmental and food contaminants, and climate change.”
The committee, in particular, “will issue recommendations when a screening reveals a health risk.” 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.
“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. With “specialists in human, animal and environmental health,” the committee will allow “a broader approach,” she added.
Established with the Ministers of Health and Research, it may be sent by one of them or self-requested and their opinions will be made public.
Source: BFM TV
