Congress report - European Health Forum Gastein

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European Health Forum Gastein 2001
Government Departments rarely talk to each other and are fiercely possessive of their
individual budgets.
Trying to persuade Health, Education and Social Services to come together to share
responsibility for children and adolescents with mental health needs, was a nightmare I
fought every day, yet the child concerned needed an input from all three services.
Now I am in the European Parliament and the same failures to form partnerships are
apparent.
As I said at Gastein last year – and will go on saying until we achieve results -
if the European Union decided next week to spend billions of Euros processing heroin or
marketing lead toys, I think I can guarantee an army of men in white coats would descend
on Brussels and take us all away for treatment in a secure institution.
Yet the biggest obstacle to progress on health in Europe and the success of the European
Union’s new proposed Health Action Programme is lack of money to spend on implementing
it effectively.
And the biggest reason for this is that, while we propose to spend a tiny, tiny sum on health
of Euro 50million a year for six years, we are content to increase our spending on growing
tobacco to over Euro 1,000 million a year.
Euro 6,000million to sponsor a known killer, a waster of lives, the biggest single cause of
cancer and heart disease and just Euro 300million to cover all the ills of our European world
that flew out of Pandora’s Box.
It is immoral and ludicrous economics.
And why does it happen and why is it so difficult to correct?
It is because tobacco subsidies come under the Common Agricultural Policy and Ministers,
MEPs and Commissioners from the countries that grow the stuff are more interested in the
votes of farmers than they are of the health of their citizens.
But now we have a new European Health competence under the Treaty of Amsterdam, which
both places Health Promotion firmly on our agenda and requires that a Health Impact
Assessment be carried out on any major new policy.
I believe that Europe needs a Health Wake Up Call. I wrote the Report for the Parliament on
the Health Impact of Enlargement and set out the problems that most of the countries of
eastern and central Europe had in maintaining health standards at a time of economic
difficulties.
The health systems are not just breaking down there, they are crumbling within our current
EU, under the pressures of demographic change (with people living longer); and of the pace
of scientific advances in medicine (with a new drug or treatment, often very expensive,
immediately causing a new queue to form); and of an increasingly well informed public, who
demand instant access to what is available and look for compensation if drugs or treatment
fail them.
To meet that challenge we need imaginative and cooperative partnerships
• health professionals; and social workers; and housing officers; and benefit
managers; and trainers; and employers; and advocates; and service users; and
families; and NGOs; and planners; and architects; and teachers; and all
International Forum Gastein, Tauernplatz 1, A-5630 Bad Hofgastein
Tel.: +43 (6432) 7110-70, Fax: Ext. 71, e-mail: info@ehfg.org, website: www.ehfg.org