The successor of the Scientific Council reveals itself a little more and becomes official.
A "committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks", which will be composed of 19 members, is created by a decree published in the Official Journal this Sunday, which also announces the promulgation of the new health law.
The names of its members will be "communicated in the coming days", said the office of the Minister of Health, François Braun.
It is not excluded that certain members of the Scientific Council, whose mission ends this Sunday with the end of the state of health emergency, are part of it.
This committee, responsible for monitoring "the health risks linked to infectious agents affecting humans and animals, environmental and food pollutants, and climate change", will in particular "issue recommendations when a projection reveals a health risk”.
It will also have the mission of "issuing recommendations on the measures envisaged by the public authorities in order to fight against a health crisis" and "on the vaccination strategy implemented, if necessary, in the face of a health threat", according to the decree.
A president, sixteen scientists, a representative of patients, another of citizens
Established with the Ministers of Health and Research, it can be seized by one of them or self-seize.
Its opinions will be made public.
This committee will be chaired by a qualified personality, appointed by the Ministers of Health and Research, and composed of "16 personalities of scientists or health professionals, a patient representative, a citizen representative", according to the decree.
“In the event of a health crisis”, its president may “propose to call on additional personalities for their specific expertise”.
The members of the committee will be appointed "for a period of two years, renewable once".
The Minister of Health declared on franceinfo on Wednesday that the committee would be “a bit of a commando team of very high-level scientists” and would be “independent, transparent in its opinions and extremely responsive”.
The goal is to be “extremely reactive as soon as a risk is identified”.
Its missions will go beyond Covid-19 “given the risks of emergence of other viruses”, underlined François Braun.
“We will have new tools, but we will be surprised by a new virus which will have other properties”, anticipated the outgoing president of the Scientific Council, Jean-François Delfraissy, in an interview with Parisian, taking stock of his regrets and of its successes in more than two years of pandemic.
With “specialists in human, animal and environmental health”, the committee will allow “a broader approach”.
