Ongoing collaboration to strengthen public health services in Greece
WHO
Dr Hans Kluge, Director of the WHO/Europe Division of Health Systems and Public Health and Ms Zetta Makri, Deputy Minister of Health of Greece met in Athens on 30 January 2014 to discuss progress and plans of the Health Reform Support Programme (HRSP) and to agree on priority areas for future collaboration within the Second Contribution Agreement currently under negotiation. The meeting was attended by the Ministry of Health’s staff and advisers, WHO’s staff and representatives of the European Commission Task Force for Greece (TFGR).
The identified priorities of collaboration between the Ministry of Health and WHO relate to:
- re-engineering of the Greek Centre for Disease Control (KEELPNO), including the structure of its local networks;
- strengthening and reorganization of the national blood transfusion service;
- strengthening the institutions working in the area of addictions (mainly drugs);
- establishment of a road casualties register.
WHO and Greek experts will further estimate the costs of the identified priorities to be reflected in the Second Contribution Agreement.
WHO/Europe signed a Contribution Agreement with the Ministry of Health of Greece on 18 July 2013 to support the HRSP for 2013–2015 in the framework of the Ministry’s Health in Action Initiative. The project’s goal is to ensure better health and well-being for the people of Greece through a comprehensive health system reform. WHO/Europe is directly involved in implementation of the primary health care (PHC) and public health (PH) pillars of the HRSP through the Division of Health Systems and Public Health in Copenhagen and the local Programme Management Team (PMT). In addition, WHO is responsible for the horizontal actions (HA) pillar, which addresses issues concerning the health sector as a whole, as well as ensuring overall coordination.
