Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-16-Speech-4-022"
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"en.20060316.5.4-022"2
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".
Mr President, I warmly commend my colleague’s report and indeed I welcome what he and the Commissioner said in their opening statements about the budget. I think that is something Parliament needs to listen to. At the moment we have an absurd budget of 0.15 cents per EU citizen – that is the total we spend each year on health in this European Union – and yet we have so many health threats, health challenges and health opportunities.
This week I met with iatrogenic patients. The Commissioner and my honourable friend the rapporteur will understand what that means, because it is Greek, but for other colleagues it means patients who have suffered severe disability or severe health problems as a result of accidents in hospital. It is one of the patient-safety issues on our agenda and was rightly put there during the British Presidency.
We face the challenge of an ageing population, with people living longer – mainly healthy – lives, but then becoming frail in older age and facing all the neuro-degenerative disease challenges that brings. We now have a drugs bill for Parkinson’s disease higher than the drugs bill for cancer.
We need to raise standards, and we raise standards in the European Union by describing good standards, not prescribing them. That is the way forward; it is not very expensive; we have done it on cancer screening, starting with the Irish Presidency and continuing with the Austrian Presidency. We are calling for that on diabetes, particularly type 2 diabetes, and the Commission itself is calling for something along those lines for mental health, one of the biggest challenges of our time. One in three of us will probably, at some point in our lives, have cause for concern, and indeed thanks are due if we have managed to make headway in that field.
But the budget is a concern. One of the greatest threats at the moment is the flu pandemic. One of the greatest needs is the establishment of the effective running of the European Centre for Disease Control. One of the problems, as we have heard directly from that board, is that it is under-resourced, under-financed and will not be able to do its job properly if the pandemic hits in the coming months, or even years. That must be a priority for us, but it must not be a priority which destroys the rest of our health work. We must devote time and energy and some resources to getting right the opportunities that are coming through the European courts for patient mobility. We need to concentrate on all those ranges of disease where there is public concern, whether it is heart or respiratory, rheumatological or brain disease.
We also need to think of the entire range of medical science, including those newest areas, like complementary medicine, which can play their part. I recently benefited from a course of acupuncture to remove the pain of sciatica and can guarantee and vouch for the effectiveness of at least one type of complementary treatment. I also commend that element of this report to the House."@en1
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