EuroPharm Forum

Letter to Members, Observers and Sister Fora
EuroPharm Forum News August 2009

Dear Colleagues and Friends

September is a busy month, and this time I wish to share with you some of my experiences from two important conferences: The FIP Congress in Istanbul and the WHO European Regional Committee Meeting in Copenhagen.

The FIP Congress was, once again, a success, and I congratulate our colleagues in the Turkish Association and at FIP Headquarters. It is wonderful that you have created a platform of such a calibre for knowledge and information sharing. In addition to the high-quality professional programme, which sets the standard of an FIP Congress, this is also the place and occasion to meet with peers. I have prepared a brief report of the networking activities in which the EuroPharm Forum engaged during the Congress; I invite you to read it.

At the meeting of the  WHO Regional Committee for Europe, the nomination of the next Regional Director was on the agenda. Ms Zsuzsanna Jakab was nominated by the Member States, and it was my privilege to congratulate her on this achievement and express my wishes for the continuation of the close collaboration now established between our two organisations.

I had the opportunity to present the pharmacists’ contribution to health care during the session of the Regional Committee and focused my intervention on pharmacists' professional activities. I also made reference to the newly released Global Pharmacist Workforce and Migration Study of the FIP.

From the professional discussions of the meeting, I would like to emphasise an excellent technical briefing on the H1N1 influenza pandemic. It was pointed out that healthcare staff must be competent for early detection of alarm signals in order to prevent the spreading of the flu. This is indeed a call for pharmacists involved with patient care all day long, and I know that many of you already have guidelines established for such detection. The WHO referred to their own webpage dedicated to data collection and surveillance of the flu:  www.euroflu.org , a link to which is also provided among the EuroPharm Forum trusted sources of information on the H1N1 influenza: http://www.europharmforum.org/page/25437.

Dr Margaret Chan gave an impressive introduction building on the facts that marked forces do no explicitly develop equity and accessibility to health care, and that the world needs better value systems. The health systems are currently based on economy, whereas they should instead be based on value. Dr Chan suggested that the financial crisis prevailing in several parts of the world might be a good opportunity to build a value system. As an example, she provided us with the latest information on vaccinations against the H1N1 influenza: in high-income countries, 90 % of the population will have access to the vaccination, in middle-income contries, only 10 % of the population will have access to the vaccination while, according to her figures, no one in low-income countries will be able to receive a vaccination against the H1N1 influenza.

All presentations from the 59th session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe are available at the WHO Europe website: http://www.euro.who.int/rc.

Best regards

Dick Tromp
President, EuroPharm Forum