Markos Kyprianou, Μember of the Commission (EL) Mr President, the European Commission does indeed plan to approve a new strategy on health for 2007 and this strategy will be a general framework with quantifiable targets which take an integrated approach to all initiatives in the health sector at European level.

Ethical recruitment policies and principles applicable to public and private sector employers should be developed in key sectors, for example the health sector, as underlined in the Council and Member States’ conclusions of 14 May 2007 on the European Programme for Action to tackle the critical shortage of health workers in developing countries (2007 to 2013) and the education sector, as appropriate.

14. Considers the Commission’s resources allocated to the health sector, and consequently to girls’ and women’s health, insufficient in view of its development policy commitments; points out that, according to the European Court of Auditors’ Special Report on EC Development Assistance to Health Services in sub-Saharan Africa (January 2009), allocations to the health sector in Sub-Saharan Africa have not increased since 2000 as a proportion of total EC development assistance for health, while the MDG 2007 Progress Chart still identifies very high level of maternal mortality in sub-Saharan Africa; calls on the Commission to substantially ...[+++] increase investment in the health sector and, in particular, in MDG5 and in sexual and reproductive health;

7. Urges the Commission to ensure that there is sufficient health expertise to play an effective role in the health sector dialogue by seeing to it that all delegations where health is a focal sector have health specialists, by working more closely in post-conflict countries with European Community Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) health advisers, by forming closer partnerships with the WHO in order to draw on their expertise, and by entering into formal agreements with the EU Member States to use their expertise; asks the Commission to send to Parliament's competent committees, by 10 April 2009, an overview of the respective number o ...[+++]f health and education experts it has made available in the region, at delegation level as well as in its headquarters, and a precise timetable/overview for 2009 and 2010 indicating how it intends to increase this number and where those persons will be located, so that the Commission replies can be taken into account in the discharge procedure for 2007;

Funding for the health sector of individual countries under various programmes has correspondingly diminished (from an annual amount of €393 million between 1998 and 2002 to €246.6 million between 2003 and 2006).

This probable twofold development highlights the problem of human resources and qualified staff in a sector - health and social services – in which employment has already increased more than twice the average in the last five years.