Despite the European Pillar of Social Rights, which includes the right to health among its key principles, many people in Europe remain deprived of healthcare. This is revealed in the 2019 edition of Médecins du Monde's (MdM) report on the state of universal health coverage (UHC), published on 11 December.
"This report fills gaps in existing knowledge and provides a better understanding of the true nature of health inequalities in Europe", summarises, in the introduction, Freek Spinnewijn, Director of European Federation of National Organisations working with the Homeless (FEANTSA).
The 2019 Observatory report assesses the health situation between January 2017 and December 2018 in seven countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. It lists the experience of 30,000 people who have benefited from Médecins du Monde's programmes, the vast majority of whom are non-EU/EEA nationals (81.6%).
Four out of five people without health coverage
The report’s conclusions are overwhelming. According to MdM statistics, 81.7% of the people they met said they had no health coverage and 92.6% lived below the poverty line in the country where they were living. The majority of pregnant women had not yet had access to prenatal care and many people suffered from chronic diseases, sometimes even with acute symptoms. Many of the children had not received the recommended vaccination rates.
Regarding the reasons for these absences, 20.8% cited “economic barriers”, while 14.3% had not tried to access health care systems due to a lack of knowledge of the medical system and patients' rights.
Médecins du Monde is also concerned about the large number of people who do not enter the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC), which exclude children under 16 years of age and people who are homeless (one fifth of those surveyed).
Results contrary to the EU's core social rights
In its report, MdM points out that these observations are contrary to the commitments made by the Member States within the framework of the European pillar of social rights (or the standards of the United Nations and the World Health Organisation in the field of UHC). The European Pillar of Social Rights, adopted in 2017, states: “Everyone has the right to timely access to affordable, preventive and curative health care of good quality”.
In its recommendations, the organisation calls for improved access to regular health care, improved methods to identify barriers to access to care for the most vulnerable people, and a rights-based approach. In particular, it asks the European Commission to “provide a roadmap for Member States to make long-term efforts to implement the principles of the Pillar”. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)