Steering Committee Healthcare Reforms

The second plenary session of the Steering Committee for the Advancement of Healthcare in Macedonia was held on June 30, 2009, in hotel Stonebridge. Attendance was full. We dispensed with some formalities to discuss at length the Agenda for the work of the five subcommittees of the Committee as it is laid out in the Matrix and graphically rendered. You can find the relevant documents on this Website.

Our process is so innovative that it takes everyone time to get adjusted. But now the members have finally begun to leverage the administrative tools at their disposal: various stakeholders have appointed voting members in all five of the subcommittees. Lively debate is going on, via e-mail and in person, regarding the Agenda, its scope and ambitions, and what we can expect as the final product and outcomes of the Steering Committee.

The International Community is beginning to notice our efforts. The WHO (World Health Organization) has been there for us from the very beginning with expertise, literature, and some logistical add-ons. The European Union and UNICEF made sure to be conspicuously present in every event, lending us much needed moral support. Now the Council of Europe and the World Bank (as well as its arm, the IFC) may join the fray.

The subcommittees - all five of them: Good Governance, Service Delivery, Financing, Pharmaceuticals, and Patients' Rights - will be starting their arduous work next week. They are slated to meet twice a month and by the end of September, if all goes well, will produce a Green Book. The first session of each and every subcommittee will be dedicated to learning the ropes: key issues to be tackled and solutions to be reviewed in view of experience from other countries and local conditions and peculiarities.

This week, we published an open invitation for Patient NGOs and advocacy groups to join the subcommittee for patients' groups. Interest is growing as the news is spreading that something truly unusual is happening in Macedonia. A foreign expert we met this morning even suggested that we brand and patent the process and spread the knowledge in other countries, even among EU members. It wasn't tongue in cheek: he meant it.