Examination of Witnesses (Questions 137
- 139)
MONDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2008
Professor Peter Borriello, Professor Mike Catchpole,
Professor Francis Drobniewski and Professor Peter Chiodini
Q137 Chairman:
Welcome to the Intergovernmental Organisations Select Committee.
Thank you for your time. You ought to know that this session will
be webcast. Also, you will see a transcript of the evidence, so
if there is anything you want to correct of a factual nature you
will have an opportunity to do so. Although questions might come
directly to individuals, all of you should feel able to add something
if you think you have something important to say. If after this
hearing you think there is something important that has been left
out, perhaps you could tell us about that and write to the Clerk.
That would be useful. When exactly were you set up?
Professor Borriello: We were formed in 2003
and I think the Act was 2005.
Q138 Chairman:
You were born before your conception!
Professor Borriello: Some people have a different
interpretation of that.
Q139 Chairman:
From your evidence, you seem to take the view that the middle
two quarters of the last century were very good on international
health but that now some of those gains are being offset. I think
you pick out globalisation, urbanisation and drug resistance.
Am I understanding you correctly in saying that? And, secondly,
what about the resistance issue, the resistance particularly of
animal to human microbes? We want to have a clearer understanding
of that.
Professor Borriello: It is easy to forget that
primarily we are in a golden age of health protection. It is very
easy to look back and think things must have been better because
we now have new, emerging infections. SARS obviously caused a
lot of public and governmental concern but we responded very well
to that. AIDS is still a major problem. It dominates people's
view of risk. When most of the population's concern about infections
risk is more about the possible side effects of the vaccine than
the disease itself, I think that tells us something. When parents
no longer worry about polio or diphtheria and many other diseases
that used to just lay waste to our population—smallpox is
now eradicated—then I think it is a little easy to think
all the problems are now and not in the past. I think we have
overcome many problems but there are increasing pressures that
increase the risk of the emerging new infections spreading quickly
as well as some existing infections, which of course are not fully
eradicated, re-emerging. One is, of course, complacency on those
that we no longer consider dangerous and therefore people are
more willing not to have a vaccine or take other protective mechanisms.
The other issue is increased globalisation, so it genuinely is
the case that what you ate for breakfast today might have been
in another country yesterday. There is also increased travel.
That mobility, that flexibility, increases the risk of transmission
of an infectious disease happening much more quickly than it used
to in the past.
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