Public health: Community action programme 1997-2001 on health monitoring

The conciliation committee, jointly chaired by Mrs Nicole FONTAINE (first vice-president of Parliament) and Mrs Els BORST-EILERS (Netherlands Minister of Public Health), met on 16 April in Brussels and agreed on a common draft on the programme concerning health monitoring (rapporteur: Mr Danilo POGGIOLINI, EPP, I). This Community programme will provide health data and indicators permitting a comparison of national indicators, for example on life expectancy, lifestyles and health habits, car accidents, hospital infrastructure. It will be implemented in close cooperation with Eurostat and will have a life of five years. The improvements which Parliament has managed to secure concern: health indicators (a system of comparable indicators is to be instituted), participation by NGOs, support for Member States for measures linked to health indicators and encouragement for setting up a permanent mechanism for monitoring and evaluating health indicators. As well as collecting data and statistics, analyses of health systems could also be carried out. Parliament has obtained an increase in funding of ECU 800 000 (giving a total of ECU 13.8 million). Furthermore, Mr Padraig FLYNN of the Commission has promised 'to give due attention to the development of statistics in the field of health monitoring with a view to enhancing the present programme'. Parliament's delegation took note of this declaration and has undertaken to support this action during the budgetary procedure. Mrs FONTAINE said that 'in an area such as health, which is a matter of great concern to citizens, we have managed to achieve a positive result despite the current budgetary constraints'. �