NEW’S | Clélio Meneses in Brussels as keynote speaker at conference on access to health care

The Regional Secretary for Health and Sport will participate, as keynote speaker, in the conference “Equitable access to health care in the European Union – The importance of European Funds to reduce disparities” to be held this Wednesday, March 1, at the European Parliament in Brussels, at the invitation of MEP José Manuel Fernandes, EPP coordinator in the Committee on Budgets.

This initiative proposes an approach to the challenges and opportunities of using European funds to improve health care in different EU regions.

Clélio Meneses and José Manuel Fernandes will be joined by MEPs Álvaro Amaro, member of the Committee on Regional Development and rapporteur for the European Parliament’s position on the renewed EU Strategy for the Outermost Regions, and Dolors Montserrat, member of the Health Committee and the Special Committee on Covid-19, and rapporteur on the lessons and recommendations drawn from the pandemic.

Other personalities, including Younous Omarjee, MEP and Chairman of the Committee on Regional Development, Antonio di Giulio, Head of Unit of the European Commission, responsible for the EU4Health Programme, and Richard Price, member of the European Cancer Organisation, will also take part in the conference.

In the meantime, also in Brussels, Clélio Meneses will meet with Ambassador Manuela Teixeira Pinto, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Permanent Representation of Portugal to the European Union (REPER), at 11 am. He will also meet with Roser Domenech Amado, director of One Health and member of the Directorate-General for Health of the European Commission, at 5 pm.

“Both meetings are essential in ensuring that the Azores will be considered under Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, the European Programme for Health, the European Strategy for Mental Health or even under the digitisation of health, as part of this Health Union. We may benefit from many measures, but also from funding. Unfortunately, this has not happened,” said Clélio Meneses.

For the Regional Secretary, the present moment is extremely important as “the European Union is moving towards greater integration in terms of health matters. The Azores are an outermost region with a Regional Health Service that is particularly vulnerable to external factors, as was the case during the pandemic period, and with only three islands with a hospital, and therefore cannot be forgotten.”

“It is essential to make European policy-makers aware of our reality, and that with little we have done a lot. Nevertheless, we need to be heard and taken into account in the shaping of European health policies,” added Clélio Meneses.

The Regional Secretary for Health and Sport will also meet with Portuguese MEPs at the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.

GRA/RÁDIOILHÉU