The Ukrainian crisis and all of its health aspects – such as healthcare, public health and contagious diseases – were on the agenda during a two-day informal meeting of EU health ministers in Athens, Hungarian Minister for Human Resources said on April 29.
Minister Zoltán Balog said that in the afternoon of April 28 the ministers discussed migration and public health issues. The care of refugees from the region – some of whom may carry contagious diseases – generally seems to affect southern European countries. But this topic also brought up the crisis in the Ukraine, which could also result in such a healthcare situation. Should that happen, countries of the Visegrád Group (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) will need both cooperation with and help from the European Union, the minister said.
During the first day of the meeting the ministers discussed aspects of electronic healthcare (e-healthcare), such as related developments and the protection of patient data. Hungary presented its recently developed healthcare data system which contains doctor-patient meeting information and gives instant access to laboratory results. Minister of State for Healthcare Miklós Szócska demonstrated on his own cell phone the mobile application that pinpoints the nearest physician, pharmacy or hospital.
On April 29 the ministers discussed the impact of the economic crisis on healthcare. Minister Balog said that while most countries cut healthcare budgets in these times, Hungary undertook a major overhaul of the healthcare system, which resulted, among others, in several hundred billion forints of savings in the healthcare budget without affecting counter prices.
The minister also said that Hungary spent several hundred billion forints in the past four years on the modernization of the healthcare system and will continue this in the next EU budgetary cycle, with the aim to improve basic healthcare so that fewer patients would need hospitalization.
(Ministry of Human Resources)
