Brussels, 19/11/2008 (Agence Europe) - Euro-Mediterranean health ministers, meeting in Cairo on 17 November, have decided on an action plan to enhance health systems and increase exchanges and sharing of experiences in all related areas, from the prevention to the treatment of various kinds of illness, transmissible, chronic, non-transmissible, and including situations resulting from natural disasters. Health, it was noted by ministers, is cross-disciplinary and should be an integral part of all initiatives, programmes, plans and social development activities within the Euro-Mediterranean area. They called for the promotion of an approach that would see health as part of all policies while taking full account of cultural dimensions.
Ministers highlighted the importance of universal health cover and the need for sufficient and sustainable funding. They noted the differences in current healthcare funding and said that equal access to healthcare for all required appropriate funding from both public and private health sectors. They also considered the issue of the migration of health professionals. It was, they said, a reality which had positive and negative sides. The negative side was the growing lack of health professionals in countries of emigration. Ministers undertook to examine ways at national and regional levels to create the conditions that would mean that more health sector staff could be trained. The positive is that migration brings with it greater exchange of knowledge and technology transfer between EuroMed partners. The aim was to provide the possibility of pooling necessary resources to develop and evaluate technological advances and ensure that these innovations, including e-health, were available to citizens, patients and health professionals on either side of the Mediterranean.
Cooperation among Mediterranean countries is already based on a large number of inter-governmental, bilateral and European (managed by the European Commission) cooperation projects and programmes, and on numerous cooperation and exchange agreements between partner countries. Moreover, ministers highlighted how important it was to adhere to major international health agreements, such as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Cooperation with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is planned and is expected to make a contribution to the sharing of expertise and best practice on control and monitoring in the Euro-Mediterranean area. There was agreement among ministers on improving the training of health and medical sector administrative personnel at all levels, to develop skill levels and quality. For this, those taking part in the meeting agreed to back EuroMed joint training programmes. Ministers called for funding options to be explored for planned cooperation projects and programmes, using the EU budget, private sector contributions and other national and multilateral resources. (F.B./transl.rt)