Just days before Universal Health Coverage Day, Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe nominee, met with high-level counterparts in Greece, agreeing a joint review by WHO and the Greek government of reforms to public health and primary health care (PHC) in the country.
The reforms seek to strengthen public health, bring care closer to communities and accelerate progress towards universal health coverage, with this review further strengthening those efforts.
The public health reform will be initiated with new public health legislation and the development of a National Strategy and Action Plan for Public Health. Moreover, comprehensive strategies will be implemented on combating smoking; lifestyle risk factors, such as unhealthy diet and physical inactivity; national screening programmes on common cancers and abdominal aneurysm; antimicrobial resistance; immunization; HIV and hepatitis C; vector-borne diseases; gaming addiction; cross-border disease control; and migrant and refugee health, which form the priorities of the Ministry of Health.
PHC is health care that is received in the community – usually from family doctors, and local clinic staff including community nurses and other health professionals. The service should be universally accessible at anytime, anywhere, at a cost which the community and country can afford. The government highlighted ways in which PHC reforms could be bolstered – notably with a public–private component to attract health-care staff. Reforming PHC is the foundation of transforming health systems across the WHO European Region to achieve universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Public smoking ban
In addition to the announced review on PHC reforms, Minister of Health, Dr Vassilis Kikilias, along with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, recently announced a historic ban on public smoking. The new legislation, which enforces the ban on smoking in public places, is already a huge achievement of the new administration.
New National Strategic Plan for Transplants
Marking a historic day for the Greek health sector, the foundation of the Onassis National Transplant Centre was staged on 9 December in the presence of the President of the Hellenic Republic, Mr Prokopios Pavlopoulos; the Prime Minister of the Greek Government, Mr Kyriakos Mitsotakis; the Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, Theodoros II; Archbishop Ieroymos of Athens and All Greece; the President of the Onassis Foundation, Mr Anthony Papadimitriou; and a host of representatives from the nation’s civil, political and ecclesiastical leadership and from the scientific and academic communities.
In his speech, the Prime Minister announced a set of actions designed to improve the health system, most significantly the drawing up of a National Strategic Plan for Transplants to be developed by a team at the London School of Economics led by the distinguished professors Elias Mossialos and Vassilios Papalois. At the groundbreaking ceremony, Dr Kluge addressed the public emphasizing the need, from both an ethical and economic perspective, for a national responsibility across all levels of society and governmental commitment and support in meeting patients’ needs through the establishment of effective transplantation programmes, but also of national prevention strategies for noncommunicable diseases, in light of the country economics and the public health-care system.