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III Notices

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

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CALL FOR INTEREST, MEMBERS OF SCIENTIFIC PANELS

(2005/C 244 A/01)

Applications are invited for membership in the scientific panels of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

About the Centre

The Centre is located in Stockholm, Sweden and started its operations in May 2005. The legal base for the Centre is Regulation (EC) No 851/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 April 2004 establishing a European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

(http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32004R0851:EN:HTML)

General description of the tasks and role of the Centre

The mission of the Centre is to identify, assess and communicate current and emerging threats to human health from communicable diseases. Within this broad mission statement, the main technical tasks of the Centre fall into the following four categories:

In its horizontal projects the Centre will gradually develop its full capacity to cover the full range of communicable diseases in prevention, preparedness, response and control.

Description of the Unit ‘Scientific Advice’

The main task of the unit for Scientific Advice is to provide sound and independent technical and scientific advice. This will be accomplished with a strong scientific core within the Centre, combined with good connections with the leading scientists in Europe in microbiology, epidemiology, clinical infectious diseases, and other sciences.

The Unit will be supported in its scientific work by

The scientific panels

Six scientific panels are to be set up, each consisting of 11 members. Their respective fields will largely coincide with the broad disease groups set out in the Annex to Decision 2119/98/EC, and will be:

There will also be a coordinating committee to address horizontal and interdisciplinary issues, constituted by the Chairs of these panels, the Secretariat of the panels from ECDC as well as other invited experts as need may arise.

Tasks of the panel members

The role of the panels will be to:

It is foreseen that initially the panels will meet twice annually for a two-day meeting. Between these meetings, the panel members will be called upon to deliver opinions by email, and there will probably be emergency face-to-face meetings as necessary. The members will be expected to not only assist the Centre in answering scientific questions, but also to take part in the development of guidelines for a harmonised response to communicable diseases in Europe, to advise the ECDC on toolkits to be proposed to Member States, to identify gaps in research and science and initiate work in these areas. A further task will be to regularly transmit to the unit for Scientific Advice novel scientific findings of importance to centre operations and policy and identify gaps where they exist in R & D and initiate procedures at ECDC to fill such gaps.

The panel members will serve for a three-year period, which can be prolonged once.

In their work, the panels will be assisted by the Secretariat inside the Unit for Scientific Advice of the ECDC, and the Chair will work closely with this Secretariat.

There will be no remuneration for serving on a panel, only for expenses incurred.

Qualifications and experience required

A panel member:

Preference will be given to applicants who possess:

Independence and declarations of interest

The members of the scientific panels will be appointed on a personal basis. Applicants will be required to declare that they will undertake to act independently and outside any influence in the work of the Scientific Panel.

Selection procedure

Any person can only sit on one panel. Applicants will be invited to choose their favourite panel among six mentioned above.

The final composition of the panels will be decided by the Director after recommendation from the Advisory Forum of the Centre.

Applicants who fulfil the selection criteria, but who are not selected to sit on one of the panels will be added to a roster of experts that can be used by the centre to rapidly set up ad hoc panels for issues falling outside the remits of the scientific panels.

Application forms, together with detailed curriculum vitae in English, should be sent electronically up to 30 days from publication of this call in the Official Journal of the European Union — C series.

All applications will be treated as confidential.

Detailed procedures are available on the ECDC website at the address:

http://www.ecdc.eu.int

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