After much deliberation the Intergovernmental Organisations Select Committee has produced its first (and possibly last!) report. Its title is: Diseases Know No Frontiers: How effective are Intergovernmental Organisations in controlling their spread? You can access it from the following link:http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/ldintergov.htm

The report received wide coverage in the media with the front page of the Independent dedicated to it and good reports in the Times, Telegraph and Daily Mirror. The Daily Mail also covered it but got it wrong as usual! A correction is to be published. (They alleged that we were more at risk of pandemic flu because of deficiencies in UK health care which is not what the report said.

The core issues here are about the effectiveness of the World Health Organisation, the difficulty of creating good health care systems in developing countries and the balance between investing in individual diseases and a countries health system, the need to improve identification of animal diseases at an earlier stage because some 75% of new diseases originate in animals and then jump the species barriers.

If you don’t wish to read the whole report try looking at the recommendations – this is an important area of policy and it affects all of us.

I now have to fight for the survival of the Committee as the Liaison Committee recently decided it did not want to have a select committee on intergovernmental organisations. I think they are seriously wrong and given the money we put into such organisations I think it is right to have some Parliamentary input into the way we use them.