Committee on Public Health Ordinary meeting
15 October 2026
Contents updated on 15 Oct 2026
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SANT European Parliament
Follow its sittings06:11 - 09:38
Speaker 1
Okay, dear colleagues, let's get started. Please take your seat. Welcome to the full and substitute members of SANT committee. Interpreters for the following languages are present today: German, English, French, Italian, Danish, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Lithuanian, Polish, and Croatian. Speech-to-text automatic transcription and translation is available today for accessibility purposes.
Scan the QR code on posters and select the channel with the language being spoken. For translation, you can choose your preferred language from the available options in the menu. Point one, adoption of the agenda. Can we adopt the agenda for today's meeting? Thank you, the agenda is adopted.
Point two, chair's announcement. The summary of the decisions taken during the SANT coordinators' meeting on the 28th of September was circulated by the secretariat on the 2nd October. On 28th September, the Council adopted its first reading position on the pharma package. Last Thursday this position was announced in the plenary. The text that the Council adopted reflects the outcome of our inter-institutional negotiations.
Our committee confirmed this political agreement with a vote on 18th March 2026. As a next step our committee will vote the recommendation to adopt the second reading.
The vote is planned for the next Santé meeting on the 10th of November. The rapporteur for the regulation on authorization and supervision of medicinal products for human use and governing rules for the European Medicines Agency is Tiemo Wölken. The rapporteur for the directive on medicinal products for human use is Dolors Montserrat. Point three, update from WHO on the recent case of pneumonia of undetermined etiology in the Russian Federation. Dear colleagues, two weeks ago we heard on the news that an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the East Far in the Russian Federation had died from severe pneumonia.
The suspected cause of death was pneumonic plague following occupational exposure in a laboratory settings settings. Dr. Abdi Mahamud, WHO Director of Health Emergency Alert and Response Operations, is joining us remotely to update the committee on this case. The debate will take in the form of one round of one-minute questions from coordinators or other members representing them. I will now give the floor to Dr. Mahamud for five minutes. Dr. Mahamud, are with you are with us?
09:38 - 09:43
Speaker 3
Yes.
09:43 - 10:35
Speaker 2
Good morning, thank you, Chair, honorable members.
Are my slides up? Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I will focus on three street questions: what happened in the Russian Federation that you alluded, what WHO knows today, and what remains uncertain. Next. Next slide, please.
I just wanted to give one quick background information how does WHO works and the International Health Regulation. WHO does not rely only on the information shared by Member State. We triangulate data from all other sources that was agreed by all the Member State. Next slide.