Actuator National Health Strategy “Together for health”, developed by the Ministry of Health and designed for the period 2022-2030, aims to change the state of affairs, shifting the focus to the health of the citizen viewed as a person with multidimensional needs and not as a simple patient, as was the case in the previous strategy. Access the National Health Strategy 2022-2030: What will Romanians’ health look like in the coming years?
The reforms of recent years and the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the reduced capacity of the public health system to respond to the needs and expectations of citizens, as well as health professionals. The National Health Strategy proposes general and specific objectives that redefine the role of the public health system as follows:
OG 1 – System sustainability and resilience
Over the past 30 years, the system has been massively underfunded and depopulated by professionals. Those who remain have a high degree of demotivation, burnout and job dissatisfaction. The administrative bureaucracy, the lack of an adequate information system for data collection and reporting, the unpredictable use of funding sources, the focus on financing health programs at the expense of monitoring results have created major dysfunctions. In addition, the lack of legal regulations and the poor use of human resources at the local level caused the health of the community, especially in times of crisis, to suffer.
Under these conditions, the Strategy sets as targets for 2030 the creation of an integrated health information system that regularly provides reports for the documentation of health policies; the increase by more than 50% of human resources and the diversification of their skills, as well as the conclusion – for one fifth of the local authorities – of partnerships with the DSPs to improve the health of the population.
OG 2 – Increasing the quality of life
A small number of chronic non-communicable diseases have the greatest impact on avoidable mortality – over 75% of the deaths recorded annually in Romania – and disability. They all place Romania among the countries with the lowest life expectancy, compared to the other EU countries. We are here because prevention service networks have been destroyed and political leaders have failed to understand the importance of prevention-focused policies. In addition, health education was done only sporadically, with often ambiguous messages.
Under these conditions, the Strategy proposes an intelligent and coordinated approach to health education including here the learning of healthy behaviors at the level of the whole society, with financial and institutional support. One of the targets is that health education to reach school curricula as a compulsory subject by 2030. In addition, at least 75% of the child and adolescent population should be educated about healthy behaviors, and at least 50% of the eligible population should be provided with early detection interventions and screening for evidenced major health problems. At the same time, the incidence and avoidable mortality are expected to decrease by 5% compared to 2022, for the main public health problems with a major impact on disability and avoidable mortality that can be detected early.
OG 3 – Reduction of mortality associated with communicable diseases
Chronic underfunding, poor procurement of vaccines and drugs, poor management of national public health programs, punitive reporting system for AHI and their poor clinical management, as well as poor response capacity to anti-vaccination campaigns are just some of the reasons why we have reached worrying results regarding vaccination coverage, incidence of tuberculosis and viral hepatitis, as well as HIV/AIDS.
The strategy sets as objectives to be achieved by 2030 vaccination coverage over 90% for all vaccines included in the national immunization program and 70% for vaccination of risk groups, for vaccine-preventable diseases; multidisciplinary AIAM control teams in each hospital and the penalty-free reporting of these infections; as well as the 5% decrease compared to 2022 in the incidence and mortality associated with TB, HIV/AIDS, HBV, HCV.
