24 Amendments of Joëlle MÉLIN related to 2014/2204(INI)
Amendment 30 #
Draft opinion
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas the worst-hit countries have received some assistance from the international community, but foreign governments have focused primarily on financing or building Ebola case- management structures, leaving it up to national authorities, local healthcare staff and NGOs to staff them; whereas international action should not be detrimental to the national sovereignty of beneficiary states;
Amendment 41 #
Draft opinion
Recital E a (new)
Recital E a (new)
Ea. whereas a high percentage of doctors from sub-Saharan Africa do not exercise their profession in their countries of origin but in EU countries, where in some cases they have trained, causing a shortage of medical staff in the countries affected by the epidemic, as they are not able to carry out their mission of prevention, treatment and early detection among their own people;
Amendment 47 #
Draft opinion
Recital F a (new)
Recital F a (new)
Fa. whereas the virus may be present in patientsʼ seminal fluid for nearly 90 days after their recovery;
Amendment 48 #
Draft opinion
Recital F b (new)
Recital F b (new)
Fb. whereas permission to board flights in affected countries was based in part on passengersʼ statements concerning their stay in infected areas, which is unreliable to say the least;
Amendment 49 #
Draft opinion
Recital F c (new)
Recital F c (new)
Fc. whereas cases of infection in the Member States have demonstrated the unpreparedness of medical teams in EU hospitals to treat Ebola cases;
Amendment 50 #
Draft opinion
Recital F d (new)
Recital F d (new)
Fd. whereas on the one hand Member States do not have the means to control entry at their own borders, and on the other have not been able to coordinate effectively joint controls on travel to and from the infected region; whereas this disorder may have contributed to the epidemicʼs spread within affected areas by facilitating international travel and thereby contributing to local populations moving around within those countries where the virus is spreading;
Amendment 51 #
Draft opinion
Recital F e (new)
Recital F e (new)
Fe. whereas the epidemic has seriously affected local farming, with the death of farm workers, local populations moving around and the abandonment of some crop areas posing a threat to future harvests; whereas there is a risk that exports to the EU may create food shortages locally;
Amendment 52 #
Draft opinion
Recital F f (new)
Recital F f (new)
Ff. whereas the monitoring of people at risk arriving in Europe is far from perfect, chiefly due to the lack of borders and the principle of free movement;
Amendment 61 #
Draft opinion
Recital G a (new)
Recital G a (new)
Ga. whereas the population of big apes (chimpanzees and gorillas) in West Africa has fallen by one third in the past 20 years because of various Ebola epidemics; whereas these apes are coming into contact with human populations more and more frequently, because of deforestation in particular, and are a link in the transmission chain;
Amendment 62 #
Draft opinion
Recital G b (new)
Recital G b (new)
Gb. whereas private research laboratories do not take an interest in this disease nor, generally, in other haemorrhagic fevers which affect poor populations sporadically but ever more violently; whereas the market generated by these diseases is not sufficiently profitable for private operators, which, furthermore, do not have suitably equipped laboratories (P4) to carry out research on pathogenes of this kind;
Amendment 72 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Pays homage to the courage and devotion of the teams of civilian volunteers and soldiers, mainly European, who have come to the aid of victims and extends its deepest sympathy to the families of the 375 medical workers who have paid with their lives;
Amendment 83 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2a. Calls on the Commission to review its policy on support for research teams concerned in the EU so they have the means needed to carry out research, find the treatment needed and produce it in the Member States;
Amendment 90 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Considers that the response of the Member States and the Commission has been slow and insufficient, and that financial support was shy and did not respond to the severity of the alerts that NGOs such as Médecins Sans Frontières and others have launched since the beginning of the epidemic; considers that the scaling-up of the Commission’s financial commitment should be stronger in terms of humanitarian and development aid to respond to the crisis; considers it necessary to increase the availability and the volume of financial resources;
Amendment 102 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4a. Recommends that the aid provided in such cases should as a priority take the form of equipment, thus improving patient care and the control and traceability of financial aid;
Amendment 115 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Points out that health information measures must continue after the end of the epidemic has been announced for a period of at least three months, particularly with a view to preventing transmission during sexual relations in which at least one survivor is involved;
Amendment 118 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 b (new)
Paragraph 5 b (new)
5b. Points out that the high risk of a future health crisis is an additional reason for the Member States to have sovereign control of their national borders and to be able to show responsibility in limiting international travel to the affected areas to a strict minimum, in particular by suspending commercial flights that are not essential for managing the health crisis;
Amendment 119 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 c (new)
Paragraph 5 c (new)
5c. Calls, in the event of a future health crisis, for departure and arrival airports on direct routes and for stopover airports to have quarantine procedures that would be operational until rapid diagnostic test results show that travellers do not present a risk;
Amendment 120 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 d (new)
Paragraph 5 d (new)
5d. Calls for measures to ensure that local food production is first used for the benefit of local populations by restricting imports to the European Union;
Amendment 126 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6a. Asks that, in the event of future health crises on this scale, the Member States should offer coordinated reception of infected patients, with specially trained teams dedicated to this task;
Amendment 128 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 b (new)
Paragraph 6 b (new)
6b. Calls for the setting up of a programme to encourage the return of African doctors who have been trained or who are practising in the Member States;
Amendment 130 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 c (new)
Paragraph 6 c (new)
6c. Calls for the allocation of EU funds for the building of infectious diseases centres at the borders of each Member State and ad hoc staff training;
Amendment 133 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Calls on the MemberAfrican States and the Commissionin cooperation with the Commission and Member States to strengthen the health systems in the West African countries affected; stresses that Ebola is definitelypoints out that, even if Ebola is a disease with a high mortality rate, but that there are numerous other fatal diseases in the area that should be treated as well (such as malaria); considers that the EU should invest in and encourage capacity building in the field by the Member States and the African states affected, in order to address the problem of the weak health systems, so that local staff may be provided with the training and adequate resources to face future epidemics (Ebola or any other illness); considers that the efforts of third party donors should be channelled into building up capacity in the field;
Amendment 143 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Calls forWould like to see educational and informative actions to be takenby the African states in cooperation with the EU Member States, to raise awareness of symptoms and preventive measures in order to facilitate trust and popular cooperation with anti- Ebola measures, as information and communication constitute an important aspect of the fight against the Ebola outbreak; points out that the situation created in some Member States following the arrival of possible cases of Ebola has shown that a campaign of information and more effective communication is needed in Europe;
Amendment 156 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9a. Considers it necessary to incorporate the great apes in the recommendations for vaccination campaigns, both for the preservation of these species under threat and in order to protect the local human populations;