DG SANCO

Over two years have passed since the launch of the Healthy Democracy process by DG Health & Consumers. In March 2009, DG SANCO published a Report on what progress has been achieved.
Background
The Directorate General for Health & Consumers launched its Healthy Democracy process in 2006 in a climate of steadily growing pressure on EU institutions to increase their transparency and open up their working processes to be more participatory and inclusive of stakeholder input.
In the time span, (...)

The European Commission adopts new Scientific Risk Assessment Advisory Structure of Scientific Committees.
The new Scientific Risk Advisory Structure of Scientific Committees was approved by the Commission on 5 September 2008. The Advisory Structure will provide the Commission with high quality and independent scientific advice on matters related to consumer safety, public health, and the environment.
A call for experts is expected to be announced within the next few weeks, and interested (...)

On 9 September, the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) adopted unanimously a Draft Report on the White Paper "Together for Health : A Strategic Approach for the EU 2008-2013"
On 9 September 2008, the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) met to vote the Draft Report on the White Paper entitled ’Together for Health : A Strategic Approach for the EU 2008-2013’ as well as a series of amendments.
The (...)

As a key element of the EU Health Forum, DG Health and Consumers protection organises the Open Forum as an annual conference and exhibition event.
The Open Forum will take place on 10/11 December 2008 in Brussels with the overall theme "Developing and Implementing Health in the European Union".
The objective of the Open Forum is to provide a platform for networking and exchange of ideas and views of different stakeholders of the European health community (health professionals’ (...)

DG Sanco is giving civil society and the general public the opportunity to participate in setting priorities for its 2009 work plan of the 2008-2013 Public Health Programme.
The public health programme, which runs for 5 years, is implemented through annual work plans setting out the areas to be funded that year. The work plan sets out an indicative budget and funding mechanism. These funding of these areas are defined by the priorities. DG SANCO has asked civil society and citizens to (...)

CHES, the Coalition for Health, Ethics and Society, held its annual lecture on Thursday the 5th of June 2008 on ’The Role of Ethics in Shaping Health Policy’ Chaired by the European Policy Centre. The talk was given by the for the European Commission, Robert Madelin.
Mr Madelin gave an very clear and impressive talk on the issues facing the integration of Health policy with economic policy and the ethical implications.
He started out by saying that health is a relatively young issue in (...)

The European Commission has called for an improvement in health reporting in recognition of the challenges facing a Europe wide health information system.
The EU called for greater consistency in high quality and fully comparable information. Eurostat and Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection (DG SANCO) have outlined their recommendations to help achieve this goal : suggesting a common framework should be adopted so that this health information should have relevance on an (...)

The European Commission has adopted a new regulation to ensure safety of food packaging made of recycled plastics. This new action sets the conditions under which the manufacturers of food contact materials can use recycled plastics.
Regulation (EC) 282/2008 on recycled plastic materials and articles was adopted on 27/03/2008 in order to ensure the safety of food packaging made of recycled plastics. The present Regulation :
Sets the conditions under which the manufacturers of food contact (...)

The EPHA Secretariat attended the Infoday on the Call for Proposals of the new EU Public Health Programme in Luxembourg on 12 March 2008.
This day was organised by Public Health Executive Agency (PHEA) in co-operation with DG Sanco. Please find all the presentations from the Information day in Luxembourg on 12 March 2008 available on the PHEA website :
In the morning a general introduction of the new EU Public Health Programme was given to the participants. PHEA, DG Sanco and DG Research (...)

The European Commission is to publish in November 2008 a Communication on rare diseases. Therefore, it has been called a public consultation concerning a European action in the field of rare diseases. Responses to such consultation should be sent to the European Commission by 14 February 2008.
Rare diseases are life-threatening or chronically debilitating diseases that have a low prevalence in population (less than 5 per 10 000 persons) and therefore need special efforts to tackle (...)