Jakab, Zsuzsanna

▪ 2006

 Hungarian epidemiologist Zsuzsanna Jakab assumed leadership of the newly formed European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in 2005, taking on the task of defending the European Union against infectious diseases. Working out of ECDC headquarters in Stockholm, Jakab began to develop a surveillance network that could collect health data from, and coordinate disease prevention among, the 25 nations of the EU. At a time when borders within the EU were becoming more open, the spread of infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), and avian influenza, posed an ever-growing threat to public health. Jakab's appointment was also seen as politically significant; she was the first citizen of one of the 10 states that joined the EU in 2004 to head an EU agency.

      Jakab was born on May 17, 1951, in Budapest. Her father was a surgeon, her mother an agronomist. She studied political and social sciences at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest for five years, earning the equivalent of a master's degree in 1974. In 1999 she received a postgraduate degree in public health and epidemiology from the Nordic School of Public Health in Göteborg, Swed. For 16 years from 1975, she held a variety of external-relations posts in Hungary's Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, working as a liaison to international organizations, most notably the World Health Organization (WHO). In 1991 she accepted a post in WHO's regional office for Europe in Copenhagen, rising to director of administration in 2000. In 2002 she was invited to return home to Budapest to serve as secretary of state in Hungary's Ministry of Health, where she assisted with the nation's integration into the EU.

      Jakab's lack of medical and scientific expertise was unusual for a person overseeing a disease centre, but the ECDC had no regulatory authority and no laboratories and would conduct no medical research of its own. Instead, one of its main functions would be to influence the formation of EU health policy. Jakab's extensive background in public health administration was expected to serve her well as she negotiated the EU bureaucracy. The agency was inaugurated with a minimal budget (about €5 million, or about $6 million, compared with the almost $8 billion budget of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), but that figure would rise incrementally to about €30 million (about $36 million) by 2007, when the ECDC was to be evaluated and perhaps have its mission broadened. Jakab's success or failure would be defined by her ability to coordinate the public health efforts of the EU's member nations, not all of whom were considered to be receptive to surrendering local control over such issues.

Anthony G. Craine

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