Better look to the future. The recent past of Epidemiology in Spain is full of duties to fulfill or, in other words, unfulfilled promises. About the present? “This is not the time to discuss these issues until it is clear how the Government is formed,” says the president of the Spanish Epidemiology Society (SEE), Oscar Zurriaga.
Prior to starting the XLI Annual Meeting of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology (SEE), Zurriaga analyzes with this medium the situation in Spain. Spanish epidemiologists they are not happy. The legislature, which concluded with the call for elections on July 23, has left “sleeping the sleep of the just” royal decrees that were going to change epidemiological surveillance in Spain to make it a fundamental instrument in decision-making in the health and beyond. But it is that, in addition, it has returned to the “starting box” the law creating the State Agency for Public Health.
“The Government has breached its commitment to Europe to create the State Public Health Agency and a new epidemiological surveillance network,” Zurriaga affirms, referring to what appears in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, where the Government explains in detail the destination that it was going to give to the European funds planned to repair the damage caused by the covid.
In the sea of pages of the aforementioned document, dated 2021, there is the section that corresponds to Component 18 and there almost 81 million euros are allocated for this “increase in the capacity to respond to health crises.” Of these European funds, 9.5 million were earmarked for the technological equipment of the future State Public Health Agency and 27.4 to provide a new information system for the Public Health surveillance network. Investments that, according to the president of the SEE, have been left up in the air.