The June 15 session and Compiling the Agenda

This coming Monday and Tuesday, we will be putting together the Agenda (programa) of the Committee. Many members contributed points they would like to be discussed by the Committee. We will organize these points (the members' contributions) and assign them to the various sub-committees. We will also extract from the members' submissions the key issues and questions that are topmost and uppermost on the members' minds.

The plenum of the Steering Committee for the Advancement of Healthcare in the Republic of Macedonia held its first session on June 15, 2009. Attendance was universal: everyone was there. The meeting lasted 4 hours. We cleared all the administrative and legal issues so that, in our next session, on June 30, we will be able to concentrate on substance rather than form.

The WHO (World Health Organization) has sent us an healthcare expert (Dr. Nora Markova) who will coordinate the activities and participation of a team of WHO experts as the needs arise. We have also been joined by Nikola Grpceski, a healthcare expert, with a Master's degree in healthcare studies from the prestigious Italian Bocconi university. Some additional experts are on their way from Israel.

This coming Monday and Tuesday, we will be putting together the Agenda (programa) of the Committee. Many members contributed points they would like to be discussed by the Committee. We will organize these points (the members' contributions) and assign them to the various sub-committees. We will also extract from the members' submissions the key issues and questions that are topmost and uppermost on the members' minds.

On June 30, the plenum of the Committee will review the results of our efforts and modify them. The final Agenda will then be adopted. We will divide into subcommittees and will be on our way to work!

The subcommittees are sovereign. They can invite expert witnesses; deliberate; make suggestions; rely on previous policy documents and reports; and issue interim reports. The members of the Committee who are in the capacity of experts will be at the disposal or all the subcommittees and can be summoned by them to render their professional opinions and services. Same goes for the foreign and outside experts (we are talking to a few foreign healthcare experts with wide, hands-on, global experience).

This process of truly public consultation is new to Macedonia and, in some respects, unprecedented even in a wider, global context. We are inventing the rules as we go along!