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Informal meeting of EU health ministers begins in Slovakia

Xinhua, October 4, 2016 Adjust font size:

A two-day informal meeting of health ministers from EU member states started here on Monday.

The meeting forms part of the Slovak presidency of the Council of the EU's agenda to set three main health care priorities: shortages of medicines for human use, non-communicable diseases and antimicrobial resistance.

"It's the issue of shortage of medicines related to parallel exports but mainly the lack of innovative medicines and their financial sustainability. The second area features non-communicable diseases, which represent a significant risk for Slovakia, and vaccination," said Drucker on Monday with regard to the recent strong anti-vaccination movement in Europe.

He went on to say the third area includes the resistance of antibiotics to microbes, which is "very critical nowadays, as we need to implement many action plans in order to reduce the ineffectiveness of antibiotics."

Among other items, EU health ministers are set to discuss the issue of tuberculosis in Europe from the perspective of its treatment, multi-drug resistance and vaccination, as well as drafted EU measures in the area of food quality improvement.

All the sessions at the two-day event will be chaired by Slovak health minister Tomas Drucker with European Commissioner for health and food safety Vytenis Andriukaitis in attendance. Endit