The topics for discussion at the first meeting in Sopot, Poland, will be the early detection and treatment of visual and auditory impairments of children, abuse of alcohol and tobacco, diet and physical activity, and making cooperation more effective at the EU level in connection with the E. coli outbreak. 

Informational items on the agenda are organ donorship and transfers and new psychoactive substances.  

Pevkur said Estonia's position on the E. coli outbreak in Germany is that the national authorities and the EU institutions responded efficiently to the situation, but a problem was uniform communication at the EU level. In the future, the potential impact and consequences of disclosing the cause and spread of the outbreak should be considered in the event of unconfirmed suspicions.

Pevkur said the priorities for developing the Estonian health care information system in years to come are to create conditions for integration of individual health care service providers into the system and to improve submission of data to the central database. Major projects include implementation of the E-ambulance service, which should give ambulance teams rapid access to the patient health care data.

Pevkur said Estonia supports cooperation at the EU level on the health care strategy and for prevention of health problems due to alcohol, smoking, unhealthy diets and lack of exercise.

According to Pevkur, Estonia considers assessment of performance to be important for making labor market measures more efficient. For this purpose, the Estonia 2020 action plan includes establishing a system for assessing concrete impacts of labor market policies. Until the new system is implemented, the Unemployment Insurance Fund will assess the measures on an ongoing basis for better provision of service and the performance of certain labor market measures will be assessed in the framework of reporting to the European Social Fund.

Kristopher Rikken