(a) health: health of key population groups; major diseases and disorders (e.g. cancer, diabetes and diabetes-related diseases, degenerative diseases of the nervous system, psychiatric diseases, cardiovascular diseases, hepatitis, allergies, visual impairment), rare diseases, alternative or non-conventional medicine and major diseases linked to poverty in developing countries; activities involved will be implemented, for instance, through coordination of research and comparative studies, development of European databases and interdisciplinary networks, exchange of clinical practice and coordination of clinical trials.

(i) combating diabetes, diseases of the nervous system (such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and, where relevant, mental illness), cardiovascular diseases, and rare diseases.

before the 2001 crisis the Commission did not subject the arrangements for prevention and control of the disease to adequate evaluation that took account of the changes in the risk factors; as the Commission did not carry out comprehensive evaluations and inspections in time, a number of weaknesses in the prevention and control arrangements concerning protective measures at borders, animal feed, animal movements and notification of the disease were not corrected before the outbreak of the epidemic; during the crisis the Commission rapidly took the necessary emergency measures, such as notification of the disease to the Member States, ...[+++]surveillance and slaughter of sheep which had been imported from the United Kingdom before the crisis began, and the closure of markets; the shortcomings in the system and in its application in the Member States in respect of the number of vets, notification of the disease and the speed at which culling was carried out were identified by the Commission during the crisis but it was too late to remedy them; the way in which the Community financing system was applied during the crisis led to inconsistencies: the reimbursement rates for the various animal diseases have been aligned only for the pig sector; there were delays in reimbursements to Member States; during the crisis, in the absence of a more clearly defined Community framework, the Member States were able to introduce a variety of systems to compensate farmers, based on varying methods of assessing the value of the animals before slaughter; after the crisis many shortcomings were remedied; nevertheless, the financial framework has not been revised and a number of Community measures are still inadequate with regard to the supervision of farms, notification of disease and speed in culling; these could compromise the effectiveness of the prevention and control arrangements in containing a future epidemic, while the Community would be obliged to reimburse the expenditure ...

Low prevalence can be understood as meaning prevalence which is generally recognized as 5 The aim of the programme is to contribute, in coordination with other Community measures, towards ensuring a high level of health protection in relation to rare diseases by improving knwoledge, for example by promoting the setting-up of a coherent and complementary European information network on rare diseases, and facilitating access to information about these diseases, in particular for health professionals, researchers and those affected directly or indirectly by these diseases, by encouraging and strengthening transnational cooperation between v ...[+++]oluntary and professional support groups for those concerned, and by ensuring optimum handling of clusters and by promoting the surveillance of rare diseases.

–diseases preventable by vaccination; –sexually-transmitted diseases; –viral hepatitis; –food-borne diseases; –water-borne diseases and diseases of environmental origin; –nosocomial infections; –other diseases transmissible by non-conventional agents (including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease); –diseases covered by the international health regulations (yellow fever, cholera and plague); –other diseases (rabies, typhus fever, viral haemorrhagic fevers, malaria and any other as yet unclassified serious epidemic disease, etc.).

The following is a list of areas considered by the group as worthy of research : - research aimed at establishing whether or not BSE has been transmitted to man; - working on the hypothesis that BSE may be transmissible to man, a number of suggestions are put forward aimed at establishing a risk assessment such as work on determining whether multiple dosing is cumulative and an estimation of the utilisation of offal in different human food products prior to the ban and the consumption of those products by individual age groups and socio-economic criteria; - is there infectivity in BSE-infected cattle derived products other than SBO (Sp ...[+++]ecified Bovine Offal) ?; - further research to establish the precise reason or route for maternal transmission of BSE in some cases; - establish if it is possible that BSE originated as a (rare) spontaneous event in cattle and that the BSE agent is different from the scrapie agent; - can BSE be transmitted orally to pigs ?; - research into the development of diagnostic techniques for BSE and CJD; - establish the efficiency of BSE inactivation procedures used in the food and pharmaceutical industry; - certain areas are suggested for research into developing therapeutic treatment for victims of the CJD disease and also into developing a test which would indicate those people susceptible to the disease; - predictive research is also proposed as it has been shown that CJD occurs rarely in individuals with certain genes. This factor should be monitored, and the possibility of a test to determine the susceptibility of individuals to CJD using this knowledge is suggested; - it is proposed to examine whether it may be possible to generate BSE resistant cattle and sheep; - a number of areas of research are also proposed with a view to improving the knowledge and understanding of the nature of the infectious agent known as the "prion".