The meeting of the OECD's Health Committee at ministerial level took place in Paris on 23 January under the chairmanship of the Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Social Affairs and Public Health, Frank Vandenbroucke. This high-level meeting was held 7 years after the last meeting of OECD health ministers and was dedicated to the theme of "Better policies for more resilient health systems".
In her speech to the plenary session, Martine Deprez emphasised the importance of synergies between the fields of health and social security to ensure greater resilience in healthcare systems.
Another element that the Minister mentioned was the need to reduce the dependence on healthcare staff from abroad. With this in mind, the Ministry of Health and Social Security is aiming to improve the attractiveness of health professions. This is also why training opportunities at the University of Luxembourg have been extended.
The Minister ended her speech by stressing the importance of health data, the basis for the development of information and intelligence systems that enable the design and evaluation of health policies based on objective information. With this in mind, the National Health Observatory's mission is to evaluate all data relevant to improving the operation of the health system and the state of health of the Luxembourg population.
The Minister then attended a working lunch on climate change and health, followed by a working session on prevention and health promotion: "Our priorities for a healthy population and a resilient healthcare system can be summed up by a coordinated, intersectoral approach centred on the individual, empowered to take an active part in the decision-making process concerning his or her state of health."
At the end of the meeting, the ministers adopted a Ministerial Declaration, as well as a new framework for assessing the performance of healthcare systems, based on existing work by the OECD and the results of the PaRIS survey, a study of patient-reported indicators.
Press release by the Ministry of Health and Social Security