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ECO on Draft COVI Report: Ensure Health Workforce Shortage be a Critical Learning from the Pandemic

22 March 2023

The European Cancer Organisation (ECO) congratulates Dolors Montserrat and colleague MEPs for the dedication and detail evident in the now published draft report of the European Parliament’s Special Committee on COVID-19.

As the draft report circulates for prospective amendment, ECO would like to suggest that greater attention be provided to the particular spotlight shone by the pandemic in respect to Europe’s critical shortages in health workforce availability.

  • Already in 2012, the European Commission estimated that Europe could be short of 230,000 doctors and 590 000 nurses by 2020, resulting in 14% of corresponding care needs not being covered.
  • This, in addition, is associated to large inequalities between countries, with some European countries having 5 times fewer doctors, and 9 times fewer nurses, than others.
  • 13 European countries have a workforce in which 40% of medical doctors are already aged 55 years or older.
  • The consequences of such persistent and chronic health workforce shortage are many, including compromises to patient safety and quality of care, and the high impacts for healthcare professional wellbeing and psychological health. An estimated 40% healthcare workers across Europe felt burnout during the Covid-19 pandemic and 30% showed signs of clinical depression.

For such reasons, the European Cancer Organisation considers it highly important that the scope for improved pan-European response to the shared challenge for EU countries in respect to health workforce shortage be a key area of lesson learning from the pandemic.

Suggested amendments to the draft COVI report from ECO therefore include suggestions such as providing the new Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) with clear mandate for action and attention on workforce shortage.

Other suggestions from ECO include

  1. Recommending that the ECDC COVID vaccine tracking mechanism, serve as a model for future vaccine tracking in other areas, such as HPV vaccine tracking;
  2. Continuous improvement of early warning systems and information sharing between countries on medicine shortages, international level, for both originator and generic medicines, and recommends an EU-wide study on their cause and remedies;
  3. Recognising the impact on women's health of the COVID-19 pandemic, including significant disruptions in breast and cervical cancer screening and HPV vaccination;
  4. Supporting the creation of a European Health Union, promoting a comprehensive agenda to increase the interoperability of health data in Europe, including, for example, greater interoperability and commonality between cancer registries.
  5. Recommending the European Commission and Member States to adopt an EU agenda to reduce the bureaucracy associated with clinical trials, following the best practices on pragmatic regulatory adaptation by the European Medicines Agency during the Covid-19 pandemic and the participatory approach including all stakeholders;

Read the full position document  here.

For any information, please contact Riccardo Moschetti (Policy Officer) at riccardo.moschetti@europeancancer.org.