Press Releases

A High-Level Meeting was successfully organized today, October 7^th, titled “COVID-19: The way forward after the pandemic”. The conference was organized by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Cyprus and took place at the St. Raphael Resort, with the participation of Mrs. Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Europe Region Director, the Health Ministers of Israel, Latvia, Malta, Spain, Dr. Andrea Ammon, Director of European Centre for Disease Control, and other experts and representatives of Romania, Hungary, Finland, Slovenia and Croatia.

During the High-Level Meeting, knowledge and experiences were exchanged among representatives of bodies managing the pandemic, ahead of the challenges that are expected to affect healthcare systems in the coming winter.

At the conference inauguration, Minister of Health Mr. Michalis Hadjipantela, stated: “We, as leaders at all levels in health and care, must prioritise developing cultures of compassion, inclusion and collaboration to improve care for patients and create high-quality workplaces for staff, embracing wholeheartedly an ethic of learning in the next phases of the response.”

Mrs. Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, praised the initiative by the Minister of Health of the Republic of Cyprus, stating: “This is a great initiative, and I very much welcome that the Member State I knows best initiates such important discussions about the future of our cooperation in the area of health.».

In turn, Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Europe Region Director, said that today, we are also looking at positive aspects of health and wellbeing, implementing lessons learned, making our region a safer place, better equipped to face future health emergencies, and better resolved to strengthen primary health care as a foundation for universal health coverage.

During the conference, Mr. Nitzan Horowitz, Health Minister of Israel, Dr. Andrea Ammon, ECDC Director, Dr. Grigorios Gerotziafas, Professor of Haematology at the University of Sorbonne in Paris, and Dr. Pavlos Theodorakis, WHO Region Office Senior Advisor, also presented.

Panel discussions followed between Health Ministers and experts, on the topics of “How COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the fight against Communicable Diseases”, and “Lessons from the Pandemic: Could we have done things differently?”

(AP)