Maciejowski Speech

THE 20th BALTIC SEA PARLIAMENTARY CONFERENCE28-30 August 2011, Helsinki, FinlandWorking together to improve people’s health and social well-beingSpeech by Mr. Marek Maciejowski, Head of Secretariat of the Northern Dimension Partnership in Public Health and Social Well-being (NDPHS), on behalf of the Chair of the NDPHS Committee of Senior Representatives.Madam Chair,Ladies and Gentlemen,It is a privilege and an honor for me to address you on behalf of the Northern Dimension Partnership in Public Health and Social Well-being. Our Partnership is currently chaired by the Russian Federation, and I will make this speech on behalf of the Chair of the NDPHS Committee of Senior Representatives, Dr. Oleg Chestnov of the Russian Ministry of Health and Social Development.I would like to start by thanking you for inviting our Partnership to the Conference. We highly appreciate the good collaboration our two networks started last year and look forward to further increasing it. Our joint undertakings will certainly help strengthen regional efforts aimed to make our region a better place to live in. It is with that in mind that our Partnership has applied for an observer status with the BSPC.With reference to the NDPHS background paper submitted to the Conference let me begin by briefly introducing you to our Partnership, which is one of the structures operating under the Northern Dimension policy umbrella. The NDPHS Partners are eleven governments, the European Commission and eight international organisations. Our mission is to promote the sustainable development in the Northern Dimension area by improving people’s health and social well-being. To that end, the Partnership focuses on two main areas: (i) reduction of the spread of major communicable diseases and prevention of life-style related non-communicable diseases and (ii) improvement of people’s standard of living and promotion of healthy and socially rewarding lifestyles.The Partnership implements the abovementioned objectives through engaging in high-level political dialogue, policy shaping, project development and implementation, networking, exchanging of expertise as well as production and dissemination of information. The NDPHS Expert Groups and Task Groups play an important role in the implementation of the Partnership’s objectives. One of these groups is the Expert Group on Alcohol and Substance Abuse, the Chairman of which, Dr. Bernt Bull, will be the next speaker. Our Partnership sees a great potential for the cooperation between our networks aimed at reducing hazardous and harmful use of alcohol, and Dr. Bull will speak about why our networks should jointly address this problem and how they can do it.Madam Chair,We applaud the organizers on including public health and social well-being among the topics of this Conference. This is an area where urgent, cross-sector political action is needed to promote and advance the much needed changes.Firstly, new health-related threats and developments are emerging, which will have a tremendous effect on our economies in the next decades, if not addressed now. Secondly, health sector alone cannot and should not address those challenges, involvement of all sectors and all stakeholders is important. And, thirdly, regional cooperation in tackling these challenges will make our response more effective and cost-efficient.Let me now address these three issues in more detail, starting with the impact on the economy.Health is an indivisible human right, but it is also an economic issue. European countries devote on average 8.3% of their GDP to health spending, and this figure continues to increase. A vast amount of this money is allocated for the treatment of non-communicable diseases. No less than 86% of deaths and 77% of the disease burden in the WHO European Region are caused by non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases.The ageing society means a higher number of people with chronic non-communicable diseases in the next decades and, consequently, a rise of the costs which are already high.I would like to stress – these costs can be contained and reduced with timely and low-cost investments. The non-communicable diseases are to a large extent preventable because they are mostly caused by the way we behave and live. Tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet are the main risk factors of non-communicable diseases. Consequently, by strengthening health promotion, it is possible to avoid, or at least shift to an older age, most of the non-communicable diseases and thus make large savings in national and everyone’s budgets.There is a room for improvement in health promotion and combating the risk of non-communicable diseases, to put it mildly. For example, Europe is the heaviest drinking region in the world, every second European is overweight or obese, every third European is smoking and only three percent of health expenditure is spent on prevention and public health programmes. It is important to recognize that proper investing in health today will lead to huge savings tomorrow. Our actions need to build upon this knowledge.Investment in health is not only about containing future health care costs. It is an investment in economic growth. Sufficient labour supply and high labour productivity are the key elements of economic growth and health is of direct relevance to both of them. Persons in good health are able and willing to enter the labour market and work longer or at least not to retire prematurely due their declining or poor health condition.Furthermore, healthy persons are more efficient and adaptable to change, thus more productive. To the contrary, poor health is linked not only to absenteeism due to sick leaves, but also involves stress, discomfort, pain and suffering, which inevitably leads to a lower productivity at work. Let me underline once more – human health is an important prerequisite to healthy economy; to put this even shorter: health is wealth.Madam Chair,Let me now address the second issue – the importance of involvement of all sectors and all stakeholders in improving public health. As I said, non-communicable diseases are the biggest killers and a huge burden to our economies. Yet, they are preventable. To prevent non-communicable diseases, people must eat healthy, be physically active, quit smoking and refrain from harmful use of alcohol. Health sector alone cannot achieve that, other sectors have an equally important role.For example, the finance sector is responsible for taxation of alcohol and tobacco products, which affects the affordability of these products. Schools have a role in teaching children to eat healthy and be physically active. Agriculture and food industry is responsible for availability and affordability of low-fat and healthy products at a reasonable price and with a clear, consumer-friendly labelling. Mass media have an impact on public opinion and habit formation, etc. Therefore, “health in all policies” approach is the only way forward to achieve effective results.Regrettably, whereas the importance of health not only as a value per se, but also as an important contributor to economic growth has been increasingly recognized, this is still, by and large, not sufficiently prioritized.For changes to take place, broad political commitment and support are needed. Therefore, the opportunity to raise these issues during this Conference is very important. Issues such as alcohol, tobacco, promotion of healthy lifestyles, are mainly regulated by the national laws, which are almost entirely in the hands of national parliaments. This is why our Partnership invites the parliamentarians, the most influential stakeholders, to change our public policies to further promote healthy lifestyles and make healthy choices easier.Our Partnership has decided to join efforts aimed to strengthen policies and activities in the area of prevention on non-communicable diseases. On 24 November we plan to hold a regional event “Healthy lifestyles – the cornerstone of public health”. Allow me to take the opportunity to cordially invite the BSPC to this event, the outcome of which will be a NDPHS strategy on prevention of non-communicable diseases. This strategy will aim to help translate respective global and European policies into actions in our region. It will be submitted for adoption to the Partnership Annual Conference to be held at the ministerial-level in November this year.Madam Chair,Let me close by saying that, although we represent different countries with different health systems, the main health-related challenges that we are currently facing are the same: the ageing society, the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases and new health threats. Consequently, it is only logical to coordinate the responses to common challenges, to pool the resources and exchange experiences on effective and less effective solutions in order to allow for a well informed policy and decision making as well as to avoid duplication of efforts and resources. I hope that today we are jointly taking an important step towards helping to improve people’s health and social well-being in our region.Thank you for your attention.