recent report<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n\nThese figures come as countries are preparing to debate the topic at the UN General Assembly in New York this September, where they will address targets for reducing noncommunicable diseases by 2030.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe World Health Organization’s Europe chief, Hans Kluge, has said the bloc can turn things around and has called for ‘bold’ prevention policies.\n<\/p>\n
A workforce issue?
\nSeveral unions, including ETUC and EPSU, said the figures reflect a broader problem with the bloc\u2019s health workforce, linked to cuts in national and EU-level social spending. According to the OECD, the EU faces a shortage of 1.2 million healthcare workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nEsther Lynch, general secretary of ETUC said that \u201cdespite the heroic daily efforts of healthcare workers regularly doing overtime to make-up for huge shortages, these figures show again that austerity kills.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\nAlessandro Gallina, a policy officer at non-profit European Public Health Alliance, said that the Eurostat figures “underscore a painful truth: prevention remains key to reducing avoidable deaths, yet the EU\u2019s health workforce planning still fails to fully embed it.”\n<\/p>\n
\nThis also comes as health NGOs \u2013 many of which focus on prevention \u2013 are concerned about their financial future under the EU\u2019s next long-term budget. In June, a few countries, including Belgium, Spain, and Slovenia, called for sustained civil society funding in the MFF.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\nFrank Vandenbroucke, Belgium’s health minister, said NGO funding would be crucial for prevention work “independent of lobbies” like the tobacco or food industries.\n<\/p>\n
\n(bms, aw)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New data from Eurostat show that around 1.1 million deaths per year in Europe could be avoided through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[105,4348,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-242368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114805647897093008","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}