Óscar Zurriaga
Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Valencia and outgoing president of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology (SEE).
The failure to pass the law creating the State Public Health Agency is very bad news. We were already very late because the General Public Health Law, which dates from 2011, already provided for the creation of a state public health centre, which was another of the things that should have been approved today, the modification precisely to refer to an agency. One of the aspects that was seen in the evaluation of the pandemic, which was published at the end of 2023, was the need for a body, an agency, a centre that from the state point of view could coordinate in an effective way and with operational autonomy the public health competences that all the autonomous communities have. Although the latter are exclusive, the General State Administration is responsible for the general foundations of healthcare and, therefore, the State is responsible for this coordination.
This agency, therefore, was very necessary, is very necessary. It brings us into line with what is happening in other European countries and, therefore, its absence and, above all, the absence of consensus to push forward the creation of this agency is, as I say, very bad news. Let's consider the possibility of a new public health emergency, and we have several on the horizon, not necessarily as serious as the Covid-19 pandemic, but some that could be very worrying. We are also in a context in which international coordination on public health matters could be greatly diminished by the departure of the United States from the World Health Organisation, as well as other countries such as Argentina. This contributes to the discrediting of this type of institution. With all this, the lack of a state organisation in good condition is going to make it more difficult for us to operate in the event of an emergency.
But this agency was not only created for emergencies. This agency was also created to coordinate all information on public health, to coordinate actions in the field of health promotion, to coordinate communication on public health issues. In other words, there were many other things that did not necessarily have to do with emergencies and it would have been time to start already, with a delay, as I say, to get all this up and running. Bearing in mind that, in addition, the approval of the law is only the starting signal for the creation; afterwards, it will take quite some time until the agency is fully operational, integrated with all the units.
In other words, all the time that is being lost now is time that we will have difficulty making up later in a way that does not cause harm to the health of all Spaniards.