The European Commission has set out its vision of the future EU Health Programme, EU4Health (not associated to the EU4Health campaign), following the announcement of EUR 9.4 billion of funding in its recent budget proposal. The new funding proposal for the standalone EU4Health Programme is a substantial increase on the previous proposal, which saw EUR 413 million for a health strand as part of the European Social Fund+. The EUR 9.4 billion will comprise of EUR 1.7 billion from the EU budget, as well as EUR 7.7 billion from external assigned revenues from the EU Recovery Instrument Regulation.
The EU4Health Programme has three general objectives:
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Protecting people in the EU from serious cross-border health threats and improving crisis management capacity
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Making medicines, medical devices and other products, available and affordable
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Strengthening health systems and the health care workforce, including by investing in public health.
Beyond crisis preparedness and responses, the EU4Health Programme will address other long-term challenges for health systems, including:
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Inequalities in health status among population groups, countries and regions, as well as access to affordable, preventive and high-quality treatment
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Non-communicable diseases, in particular cancer, mental health, rare diseases and risks from health determinants
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Uneven distribution of health system capacity
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Obstacles to the uptake and scaling of digital innovations in health
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Growing health burden from environmental factors, as well as from demographic changes.
You can read the Commission’s outline for the Health Programme here: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_20_956
