Leveling the playing field, drug safety, quality of life. A new health strategy for Poland and Europe

The discussion "Equalizing Opportunities, Drug Safety, Quality of Life. A New Health Strategy for Poland and Europe" began with an attempt to recapitulate the achievements of Poland's priorities during the upcoming presidency. One of them, Marek Kos reminded the audience, is drug safety. The deputy head of the health ministry drew attention to a non-obvious aspect of it. - The blackout on the Iberian Peninsula in early May gave me food for thought regarding the importance of energy security. If there is a power shortage, there will be nothing. Also the availability of medicines," he pointed out, calculating that this includes both storage conditions, the ability to issue and fill prescriptions, not to mention interruptions in production and distribution.

Poland has also strongly emphasized prevention during the presidency. Kos acknowledged that we have a new opening in the form of the "My Health" program, but stressed that strong decisions by the Health Ministry and parliament are needed in this area. - Enough funds are not going into prevention to have an effect, he said. However, the problem is not only money. Experts are unanimous - there will be no progress in this area if the level of health education is not raised. Marek Kos assessed that health education should be a "real hit" in schools, and lamented that it will not enter them in September as a mandatory subject. - I hope that it will happen in September 2026, and that competitions and Olympiads will soon be held in this subject, treated equally with chemistry and biology. For candidates for medical-related studies, knowledge of health education is more important than physics, with all due respect to this subject," he pointed out.

Dr. Beata Małecka-Libera, chairwoman of the Senate Health Committee, also spoke about the need for health education, or building awareness among healthy people about prevention. As she admitted, the successes of the Public Health Act, passed a decade ago, can be considered half-hearted, as we are still just learning to reach citizens with the message that it is worthwhile and necessary to take advantage of the solutions the system creates (for example, by participating in screening programs or vaccinations). - Public health can be associated with something that is not "own," individual. If something is not "mine," there is no need to take care of it. Perhaps we should rather talk about welfare? - wondered the author of the Public Health Law of 2015.

Ms. Malecka-Libera announced changes to the Public Health Act itself as well as to the National Health Program to adapt the provisions to new realities and challenges (taking into account, for example, the huge advances in digitization). She stressed that the absolute priority in the NPZ will be children adolescents. - It is their health habits, their current and future health that we must take special care of. The Health Committee chairwoman stressed that not only schools, but also local communities, local governments, also NGOs, must be involved in health education in the broadest sense. She appealed to the representatives of patients' organizations present at the congress to also take up this task, especially since health education includes not only primary prevention, but also, for example, the topic of adherence, i.e. the patient's adherence to medical recommendations or the therapeutic procedure agreed with the doctor. - We know how many patients do not adhere to this, which has measurable consequences," she stressed.

- The "My Health" program has a chance to equalize access to preventive health care. However, hard work is needed, in which pharmacists, diagnosticians, of course, the staff of all outpatient clinics, not just PCPs, doctors and nurses should be involved," pointed out Norbert Pietrykowski, MP TD Poland 2050. In his opinion, one of the main reasons why less than one in ten patients have benefited from the Prevention 40 Plus program in less than four years is the huge deficit of information about the program itself.

When talking about the priorities of the Polish EU presidency, it is difficult to forget about digitization. Prof. Ewa Lech-Marańda, national consultant in hematology, director of the Institute of Hematology and Transfusiology in Warsaw, referred to this, recalling that at the end of March the EU regulation on the European Data Space came into force, which introduces key changes in the way patients' medical information is processed, shared, and hematology is even a model area in which it is possible to analyze data, monitor the quality of treatment in individual centers. Make analyses and share the results. The hematology community has long been pushing for the possibility of an interactive report aggregating data, collected at the National Health Fund, on plasmocytic myeloma treatment. In order for such a tool to be created, it is necessary to have access to the System for Monitoring Therapeutic Programs (SMPT). Insight into the data on completed trials and the course of treatment of patients treated in the drug program will allow better evaluation of the effectiveness of therapy, the efficiency of drug programs, and more precise planning of health measures. It will also allow monitoring whether all centers, the national consultant said, are following standards. - Since in plasmocytic myeloma all lines of treatment are included in the drug program, this will be easy to map, the expert argued.

Filip Urbanski, director of the Department of Analysis, Quality Monitoring and Optimization of Benefits at the National Health Fund, assured that after the NHF has completed work on making quality measurement indicators available to providers, it will be able to shift forces to the project on the interactive report dedicated to plasmocytic myeloma, both in terms of providing data and visualization tools. At the same time, he reminded that the NHF is not the only institution collecting data. - The e-Health Center has data on medical events. It is necessary to put pressure on providers to improve the quality of this data, he addressed patient organizations present at the conference. - We have a lot of catching up to do in this area.

Lukasz Rokicki, president of the Wieslawa Adamiec Carita Foundation, also spoke about how patients, but also the system, can benefit enormously from the proper use of the opportunities provided by digitization to analyze available data, citing discussions held among thirty countries on optimizing treatment for patients with plasmocytic myeloma. - Optimization is important, because we already have a lot of therapies at the moment, and there will be even more. It is necessary to take a big step towards digitization of hematology care," he pointed out, stressing that the priority is to benefit the patient, but not without importance are also issues of therapy efficiency, which translates into good use of public funds. This is shown by the experience of other countries. - In Sweden, every oncological disease, including plasmocytic myeloma, has a registry. And this country has some of the best treatment outcomes in the world," he reminded, also pointing to the positive examples of Denmark and Germany.

The topic of international cooperation was also raised by Marzanna Bienkowska, deputy director of the Department of Cooperation, Office of the Patient Ombudsman, who stressed the importance of work on the introduction of the European Charter on Patients' Rights into general circulation. - More and more organizations are getting involved in this across the EU," she said. During the Presidency, Poland twice hosted meetings of patient ombudsmen, although, as the MPC representative said, we are the only ones to have a separate office, the defense of patient rights in most countries is empowered either in ombudsman institutions or ministries responsible for health issues. On the agenda of EU discussions is the establishment of a joint institution that would be responsible for the implementation of patient rights on an EU-wide scale. - We also need to talk not only about the rights, but also about the duties of patients," Marzanna Bieńkowska reminded, mentioning in this context both the problem of not cancelling appointments and being proactive about prevention and taking care of health.

- A decade ago, patient organizations did not have such a strong position as they do today," admitted Magdalena Kolodziej, president of the WE PATIENTS Foundation. As she stressed, at the moment it is even obvious that patients' representatives are everywhere where decisions are made, concerning their welfare. - We have the opportunity to raise opinions, comments, complaints, in a systemic way. This ensures that they do not go unheeded," she said. This certainly builds agility. Magdalena Kolodziej, responding to the call for greater involvement of patient organizations in health education, said that it could indeed be greater if there were funding to activate groups, operating at the local level.