22nd meeting of the SEE Health Network, Belgrade, 2009

This 22nd Meeting of the South-eastern Europe Health Network (SEEHN) under the Presidency of the Republic of Serbia, is its regular sixth monthly meeting as stipulated in the Skopje Pledge (2005) and the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) (2009). The Network meeting was attended by over 30 participants from all the SEE countries (with the exception of the Republic of Moldova), the Minister of Health and the Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for EU (Ministry of Health) and the National Coordinator for the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) in the Republic of Serbia, as well as a representative of Belgium as a donor country and observers from the International Organization for Migration. Excuses were received from the representatives of Republic of Moldova, as well as from the representatives European Commission (EC), the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB). The absence for health reasons of the Executive Committee member, Prof A. Constantopoulos, was sincerely regretted, and wishes for a speedy recovery were transmitted. The full list of participants is attached in Annex 1.

The main purposes of the meeting were to complete the process of handing over to the SEE countries the ownership of the regional cooperation in public health and in particular the establishment of SEEHN Secretariat in Skopje, to start preparations for the Third Ministers of Health Forum in Sarajevo in 2010, and to continue the establishment of Regional Health Development Centres. In addition, a special seminar on “Good governance in health systems” was organized by the Council of Europe within the framework of this meeting.