“I cannot present the themes of today’s meeting without mentioning the twentieth anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. We have the duty on this anniversary to remember the thousands of people in the immediate vicinity of the nuclear power station who died as a result of its malfunction. The delayed effects – cancer and birth defects – will continue to leave their terrible mark on future generations. We all experienced through Chernobyl the uncontrollable threat nuclear power presents to a whole continent. Chernobyl must not be allowed to happen again”, Federal Minister Maria Rauch-Kallat, President of the Health Council, said at the press conference winding up the Informal Meeting of Health Ministers.
“The ministers at this conference represent one third of the world population and thus represent the interests of 2.1 billion people. This was a very successful ‘Vienna congress of the global health network’, which we have begun to create today in order to learn from each other”, Rauch-Kallat continued. She thanked the Commissioner responsible, Markos Kyprianou, the deputy Director-General of WHO, Catherine LeGales-Camus, the health ministers of the USA and China, Michael Leavitt and Qiang Gao, and the EU health ministers for their constructive contributions.
“We succeeded in reaching a broad consensus on the main themes of diabetes and women’s health. I am confident we will be able to adopt concrete conclusions at the formal meeting of the Council of Ministers in Luxembourg on 2 June.” On the subject of diabetes, Maria Rauch-Kallat said: “We have agreed on the need to prepare diabetes plans in every EU Member State in order to combat successfully Type 2 diabetes, one of the world’s most underestimated diseases. These plans must contain prevention and early detection programmes and set clear objectives, which above all include and specifically target disadvantaged groups.” She said that another objective of the diabetes strategy was to create national reference centres and to introduce a European diabetes register. Such a register was particularly important in that it is necessary to work with primary and secondary prevention in this area. “We need precise data in order to verify whether the measures taken are effective in preventing diabetes. Only rapid, joint action will enable us to protect people effectively from diabetes, a disorder described by the WHO as the scourge of the 21st century”, she declared.
The second main theme of the Health Informal was women’s health. “Until recently, women’s health was considered purely from the reproductive angle. In the meantime, this topic has become increasingly visible in all health sectors. It was high time to make gender-based medicine a theme in the European Union too”, Rauch-Kallat said. “Gender-based medicine is the only way to ensure optimum care for all people, men and women.” At today’s meeting, the Commission was asked to draw up a second European report on women’s health 2006/2007. According to Rauch-Kallat, Commissioner Kyprianou had promised to organise this. She concluded by saying she was “particularly pleased we managed to find common ground with China and the USA on this subject”.
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