Dutch Safety Board very concerned by new government cutting pandemic preparedness budget
The Jetten I Cabinet is scrapping the plans and budget to make the Netherlands better prepared against the next pandemic. Chris van Dam, chairman of the Dutch Safety Board (OVV), is very, very concerned by that. “It’s the same logic as abolishing the fire department because there’s no fire now,” he told the Volkskrant.
According to Van Dam, the OVV tries not to get involved in political discussions, but he feels moved to speak up because safety must not depend on political preferences. “What’s happening now isn’t good for Dutch safety. That’s the only interest I have to serve.”
After the coronavirus pandemic, the OVV wrote three extensive reports on everything that went wrong during the crisis and how to prevent similar mistakes in the future. The Rutte IV Cabinet adopted all the OVV’s recommendations and allocated €300 million for pandemic preparedness.
A year later, the Schoof I Cabinet scrapped almost all those plans. And now the Jetten I Cabinet got rid of the remaining few, including the funding for the National Scaling-Up Function for Infectious Disease Control (LFI) department at the public health institute RIVM. “Soon we’ll be left with even less than we had before the coronavirus,” Van Dam said. “There’s not even any funding left for sewage water checks. These are necessary to gain a picture of how infectious diseases are developing.”
Van Dam is outraged. “That we have such a short memory for a crisis that lasted so long, and whose consequences are still felt by so many people,” he told the Volkskrant. “Moreover, the risks of new infectious diseases are increasing rather than decreasing.”
Part of the preparedness plans is to make the healthcare system as a whole more resilient, he added. “Suppose that one day, all hospitals in the Netherlands are paralyzed due to an IT failure. Not unthinkable these days. Then we need the preparedness tools to help us through the winter. It’s so incredibly bad to abolish this.”
The government’s plans to focus on broader resilience and prevention won’t be enough. “General prevention is also important, but what do you do with that if bird flu has jumped to humans in Asia, and an infected person lands at Schiphol Airport? What good are yoga classes for the population then?” Van Dam said.
