Ebola Expert Calls for 'Epidemic Intelligence Service' to be Stepped Up in Europe

Peter Pilot warned that Europe will be ‘vulnerable’ if it does not regard viruses as a ‘national security issue’ like the United States.

Microbiologist Peter Pilot who discovered the Ebola virus has warned that Europe will be ‘vulnerable’ if it does not regard viruses as a ‘national security issue’ like the United States.

Piot, director of the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, who recently returned from a visit to treatment centers in Sierra Leone, praised the Centers for Disease Control in the United States as a ‘formidable force’.

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He said, "It's time the UK and Europe had a well-trained corps of people who are globally experienced and deployable. We don't have that and that makes us vulnerable. We don't have this 'epidemic intelligence service'. You don't want to depend on information coming from the US. That's a national security issue."

Piot has been highly critical of the delay in local and international responses to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, but said that now the effort is paying off.

Source-Medindia

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