EU-wide diabetes network

By Tara McLaughlin

Date: 04/05/06

Health ministers will in June present proposals for a Europe-wide network of healthcare facilities specialising in diabetes treatment and research. They will also call for integration of national databases of diabetes patients into a European database, it emerged at last week's informal health ministers' meeting in Vienna (25-26 April).

"We have agreed on the need to prepare diabetes plans in every EU member state in order to combat successfully Type 2 diabetes, one of the world's most underestimated diseases," said Maria Rauch-Kallat, Austrian health minister, after the meeting.

Type 2 diabetes, the most common type, affects 22.5 million people in Europe. Complications from diabetes include cardiovascular disease, kidney damage, vision loss and ulcerations that could lead to amputation.

This type of diabetes is a result of lifestyle as well as genetics, according to health experts. But most cases tend to occur in severely obese people.

Women's health was also on the agenda of the Vienna informal meeting. Commissioner Markos Kyprianou committed to drafting a report on the state of women's health in the Union by 2007. The first such report was presented in 1997.

Article reports from an informal meeting of EU Health Ministers in Vienna, 25-26 April. Proposals were made for a Europe-wide network of healthcare facilities specialising in diabetes treatment and research as well as for the integration of national databases of diabetes patients into a European database. Another item on the agenda of the meeting was women's health.