«Brigitte Autran is appointed president of the committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks», is it notified in the OJ.
This committee, created this summer, succeeds, with a broader aim, the Scientific Council created in 2020 to guide the action of the French government in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This Council, which was chaired by Professor Jean-François Delfraissy, ceased to exist with the lifting of the state of health emergency at the end of July.
His successor will be responsible for keeping a watch on all health risks, with particular attention to the consequences of global warming as well as the interactions between animals and humans.
This global vision, described as «one health» by its promoters, is increasingly defended by a number of public health specialists.
«Diseases can be transmitted from animals to humans, or vice versa, or even boomerang back from one to another,» detailed Ms. Autran in an interview given to Le Parisien on the occasion of his appointment.
“We have known this for a long time but without fully taking the measure”, and “today, public policies must take this fact into account”, she underlined.
Ms. Autran, whose research has mainly concerned AIDS, intends to compose the team of this committee, which must include around fifteen scientists, by the start of the school year.
On this occasion, she spoke on various current health topics, starting with the Covid pandemic, which she warns is not over and risks experiencing a new peak at the start of the school year after the current low. .
But she also differentiated the fight against Covid, in which it seems illusory to completely eliminate the circulation of the virus, from that against monkey pox, or «monkeypox».
«A zero Monkeypox strategy is possible, unlike that of zero Covid», she assured, calling for the acceleration of vaccination campaigns. «By its nature, its routes of transmission, it is a virus that can be controlled.»