| The EU Parliament CAM Interest group met on the topic of CAM: an Investment in Health on June 27th 2013. It was co-chaired by Mr Alojz Peterle MEP, Slovenia and Mrs Sirpa Pietikainen MEP, Finland. The agenda and Speakers are overleaf. Approximately 60 people attended, including 4 EFCAM Board members.The Keynote speaker was the Health Commissioner Mr Tonio Borg. This was the first time that a Health Commissioner has attended a CAM Interest Group meeting in the Parliament. Thanks are due to Mr Peterle for organising this.The Commissioner declared himself a believer in CAM and said that he has used Chinese Medicine. He said that the prejudices about CAM should be removed, that people should be allowed to chose their healthcare and providers have free movement to practice. He spoke of the financial pressures of health systems to do more with fewer resources and that in this context sustainable treatments, cost effective treatments and anything that can produce better outcomes at lower cost was welcome. Citizens should be empowered to make good health choices for themselves because good health is a fundamental right of all citizens.
EFCAM thanks Commissioner Borg for his attendance and for his general welcoming of CAM. We are sure that further initiatives in relation to CAM will follow from this. Mrs Pietikainen and Mr Peterle made a number of suggestions for follow on action: perhaps a unified umbrella for professional training, to get more data about cost-benefits, to look for possibilities in existing legislation for regulation but to also push for own regulation, and n perhaps a much bigger conference next April/May than that organised by ourselves last October. For more information contact the EFCAM President or Secretary respectively: Seamus Connolly, Heinrike Bergmans |