HEALTH WORKERS : GREEN PAPER TACKLES HEALTH WORKERS' SHORTAGE AND MIGRATION.

A consultation to identify and resolve the numerous challenges facing the EU's health workers today has been launched by the European Commission's green paper entitled EU workforce for health', which it adopted on 11 December. All interested organisations are invited by the Commission to send their comments on this document by 31 March 2009.

The challenges are three-fold, according to the Commission. First is the ageing of the population. Between 2008 and 2060, the majority and the fastest-growing part of the population will be aged 80 or above. Simultaneously, the average age of the Union's health workers will also increase, and the number of young professionals entering the health workforce will not come close to the number of older workers leaving it. Then there is the fact that while new technology increases the range and quality of health care in terms of diagnosis, prevention and treatment, the need is also there to train and pay the staff that uses it. Finally, people have to face up to "new and re-emerging threats to health," such as communicable diseases.

All these developments require "continually increasing spending on health," which in turn poses "major longer-term issues for the sustainability of health systems in some countries".

In order to be able to adequately respond to these challenges, the health systems must have "efficient and effective work forces of the highest quality," the green paper says, stressing that "health services are very labour intensive". Calling health care "one of the most significant sectors of the EU economy," the document adds that it employs one-tenth of the Union's active workforce.

The aim of the green paper is to...