“I consider what happened yesterday in Parliament to be very serious, with a vote that established that Italy will be the only country that does not join the global health surveillance network, through the no to the so-called Green pass of the World Health Organization. In this way it will be cut off from all information control mechanisms. This isolates us considerably in the already difficult attempts at surveillance and health prevention” He explains this to Adnkronos Salute Walter Ricciardiprofessor of Hygiene at the Catholic University of Rome, regarding the green light to the Pnrr decree which contained, among other things, the cancellation of our country's participation in the digital health certification system that the WHO is building.
Ricciardi underlines the connections that public health has with the rest of the world, recalling the concerns linked for example to the ongoing avian flu epidemic in the United States. “It seems that we haven't learned anything from Covid”, he adds and also recalls how health surveillance also has strategic importance on an economic level. “We see it with what is happening at the moment in Parma, with the swine fever. Now everyone is alarmed, but the alarm was raised by the experts weeks ago. Consequences? All exports of Parma ham are blocked. An economic catastrophe linked, unfortunately, to the lack of surveillance and prevention.”
With this in mind “Yesterday's Parliament decision was a bad news, for science and for public health – says Ricciardi – because in fact we are cut off from a global information system in which epidemics and pandemics, as we are seeing, are global. And staying outside means isolating ourselves and condemning ourselves to navigating without the compass of international connections.”
Ricciardi also focuses on another theme: in the USA traces of avian virus have been found in samples of pasteurized milk. “They represent a signal not to be underestimated,” he says. In terms of the epidemic underway in US farms, there is in fact “a worrying situation, which at the moment is not being managed well by the American health authorities who have underestimated it, according to all American scientists”.
“It is a situation that needs to be kept under control – continues Ricciardi – which signals a real risk of spillover”, the passage of the pathogen from one species to another with the danger of triggering a new pandemic. “We must be very careful to monitor – he underlines – and also, as a country, to keep ourselves hooked to the global surveillance system. Not having joined the so-called 'global Green pass' of the World Health Organisation, as sanctioned by the vote on the Pnrr decree Parliament yesterday, is not – in this context – good news for us”.
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