Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-292"
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".
Mr President, I wish first of all to congratulate the rapporteur, Mrs Svensson, and of course the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, for the very important job which they have done in drafting this report.
I shall follow the debate with a great deal of interest.
It is a fact that, from the day I took up office and became involved in health issues, I realised that there is indeed a gender dimension – a difference between the two sexes – in health issues.
There is, for example, the question of smoking, where it now appears that there is an increasing tendency among women to smoke, especially young women and especially on the basis of the false promise that they can use smoking to control their weight. We know society's problems as far as young girls' weight is concerned and this is now being exploited in order to promote smoking.
Then there is the question of HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately, the number of cases is increasing in the European Union among young people, especially women. This is also one of the most worrying factors about this illness. Then there is, of course, the question of alcohol, consumption of which is indeed rising at the moment thanks to alcopops, which target and are mainly consumed by women, with the social problems that this can cause.
Of course, that is why I consider the report to be very important and both I and the rest of the Commission will take very serious account of the proposals contained in it. Of course, I must say from the outset that many of the issues touched on in the report falls within the competence of the Member States. Nonetheless, we have ways, such as proposals, recommendations, the open method of coordination and guidelines, with which we can develop a common policy between Parliament and the Commission in order to persuade the Member States to apply it.
I also wish to refer briefly to two or three matters: in both the 2006 programme and the new health programme we shall take account and promote the gender dimension, exactly as the report proposes; on the question of smoking for 2006, we shall focus our attention on young women. The same applies to alcohol: the strategy which I shall be presenting within the coming year will have a special dimension for young women.
The same also applies to mental health, which will be approached from the criterion of the gender dimension. The Green Paper on mental health which we shall be publishing in October will also emphasise this issue. We shall soon be announcing the new guidelines for breast cancer screening and we have already extended work on cervical cancer also. We believe that, by the end of the year, we shall have the first package of guidelines. This proves that we really are taking account of this dimension.
To close, what is really important, and I take it on board and will promote it in the Commission, is the question of collating data, really accurate data which will give us the real dimension of the difference between the sexes in the health sector; this will of course help both us and the Member States to plan the rest of our strategy. For example, in 2006 we shall define indicators for gynaecological health and the menopause, such as an endometriosis indicator which is, of course, extremely important.
I wish to close by saying that in the pharmaceutical sector, together with my colleague Mr Verheugen, we shall soon be announcing an initiative in the pharmaceutical industry sector and we shall take account here in the patient information sector of the need for a different approach to women as regards the use of drugs which, as the report quite rightly says and there is no need for me to analyse it further, react differently in men and women."@en1
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