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Community Action in the Health Field: A General Framework by the European Union

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Three Main Principles

  1. cooperation must help to seek greater fairness and social justice and make it possible to express and individual and collective right to better health.
  2. cooperation is not a substitute for national efforts, it is not meant to answer all problems and needs but is there to help countries satisfy the most fundamental needs, particularly those of the most vulnerable groups.
  3. there is no universal model for organising health systems or their constituent parts. National characteristics and requirements must be respected.

Two General Objectives for Community Aid

  1. to contribute to the creation of an environment more favourable to health.
  2. to help countries to formulate and implement health policies designed to meet their people's fundamental needs.

Four Strategic Priorities

  1. to ensure that the health dimension is taken more fully into account in development policies, particularly in the preparation and implementation of structural adjustment programmes.
  2. to help correct structural imbalances in health systems, by directing action towards supporting and strengthening basic services.
  3. to facilitate institutional reform by building up capacity at the central level, supporting the decentralisation process, encouraging the sharing of responsibilities among the various parties and especially between the public and private sectors.
  4. to help countries develop systems and measures to mobilise and manage available resources more efficiently, particularly by developing support for programming and budget management and measures to improve supply systems for medicines.
Source
'Development Cooperation to Improve Health in the APC Countries,' Development, European Commission, DE 97, December 1998. Page 11.