The facts set out at the Petersberg Conference are encouraging: EUR 830 million already allocated by Europe, with a tangible impact on medicine and health, education – education which is now finally accessible to girls too – security through mine-clearing and the deactivation of unexploded bombs, agriculture, the restoration of urban areas, the reconstruction of infrastructure and return and assistance for refugees who are at last going back to their country.

The UN development programme and Unicef are responding to these disturbing statistics and they have calculated, for example, that an annual expenditure of USD 80 billion over a period of 10 years could guarantee every human being access to basic education, to basic medical care and to adequate nutrition, to drinking water and to health infrastructures, and, for women, access to gynaecological and maternity treatment: this sum is four times less than the amount the developing world repays in interest on its debt, a quarter of the US military budget, 18% of the amount spent on advertising in the world, 9% of the military expenditure in the ...[+++] world or half the assets of the four wealthiest people in the world.

O. whereas in Europe there is consensus regarding fundamental ethical standards and principles which have found expression in particular in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and whereas organisations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Council of Europe, and the European Union itself use as their guiding principles ethical principles which include in particular the inviolability of human dignity, individual self-determination (implying that a person must give his or her free and informed consent, privacy must be respected, and personal data must ...[+++] remain confidential), the necessity of research, protection of public health, free access for all to necessary health care, respect for the disabled and their right to independence and to integration into society, and non-discrimination on the grounds of genetic, racial or religious features,

(20) Whereas a Community strategy must place the emphasis on data, research and evaluation as well as information, health education and training and must take into account the complex nature of the phenomenon, the risks associated with it and the fundamental importance of the wide variety of health and social responses vital to health protection and the quality of life;

7. The following areas have been singled out for possible future Community action in the public health field (see Annex): - Health promotion, education and training; - Health data and indicators as well as monitoring surveillance of diseases; - Cancer; - Drugs; - AIDS and other communicable diseases; - Accidents and injuries; - Pollution related diseases; - Rare diseases.