The European Commission Directorate General for Health (DG SANTE) organised on April the 21st, the conference “Towards better prevention and management of chronic diseases” where Commissioner for Health Andriukatis underlined the need to work on prevention, promotion and prevention, and to count on the participation of civil society. EFA agrees with this message but only with the addition of a fourth P: patient centred care.
EFA was represented by Senior EU Policy Advisor Roberta Savli and we were glad to see that almost all invited Member States and stakeholders asked for more concerted EU action to support WHO plans on non-communicable diseases. Although Commissioner Andriukaitis identified the need to fight all main risk factors affecting non-communicable diseases, no plan to address them was presented. The Commission would rather support Member States national programmes and called for more cooperation and exchanges between existing stakeholders to work all together for the same objective of improving health of Europeans and reducing the burden of chronic diseases.
The event served to launch the new Health Policy Platform, where all stakeholders are invited to register and participate in the discussions.
To know more about our asks on chronic diseases, check our healthcare section.