Later this month, the 53 Member States of the WHO European Region will gather in Tallinn, Estonia, for the WHO European Ministerial Conference “Health Systems, Health and Wealth”. A long road has been covered and ample progress made since September 2005 when countries called upon WHO/Europe to organize this conference to better respond to existing and emerging health challenges through health systems. The process towards Tallinn has been intensive and highly collaborative, with five preparatory meetings and an external advisory board guiding the work of the WHO Regional Office for Europe. This massive consultative effort demonstrated that stakeholders and actors are able to join forces for setting up a European strategy of how national health systems can be strengthened. This also includes bringing to policy makers the new evidence on health systems’ substantial role for improving health and wealth of societies. The Tallinn Charter: Health Systems for Health and Wealth will be discussed and hopefully signed during the conference by the WHO European Member States. The Charter will bring health systems and health high on the political agenda of the governments and will explicitly define the political commitment of the Member States and the role of the partners in ensuring that well performing European health systems are contributing to improved health and wealth of their people.
The European Commission has been a close partner of WHO/Europe in this process. The two organizations are natural allies, as they share their constituency - 27 common Member States but also 7 accession or potential candidate countries, 4 EEA/EFTA members and 7 countries covered by the EU Neighborhood Policy. Besides, EU and WHO share the same values, which, they believe, underpin and drive the performance of health systems. They also share the concern that health systems issues should be at the core of the European policy developments, as health systems are a fundamental determinant of health. It is through health ministers’ governing role that other sectors and policies should be influenced for addressing health concerns. These aspects of our common thinking were also outlined in the EU Health Strategy 2008-2013.
WHO/Europe has led a Europe-wide effort of working together with the Member States, partners and experts to meet its mandate - to support countries in strengthening their health systems. Our EC partners have been fully on board in the effort. In Tallinn, this collaboration will be clearly seen. I will be very glad to welcome the EU Health Commissioner to give a keynote speech. Many senior experts of DG SANCO and other EC services will participate in various sessions, and an EC satellite session will further give visibility to EC’s work on some aspects of health systems strengthening.
I believe we shall together be able to respond to the most challenging questions to be addressed, in regards to the dynamic relation between health systems, health and wealth.
