European Parliament approves non-communicable diseases approach

European Parliament approved on Wednesday (13 December) a report addressing the burden of non-communicable diseases with the main focus aimed at prevention and a controversial approach to alcohol intake.  

Non-communicable diseases – such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases – account for 90% of all deaths in the EU and 70% of all premature deaths in Europe.

“We need to take action to prevent premature deaths, improve citizens’ quality of life and ensure the EU’s competitiveness”, said Erik Poulsen, Danish liberal MEP and rapporteur of the file, in a press release after the vote that gave a green light to the file with 578 votes in favour, 39 against and 15 abstentions

He added that NCDs are now a significant challenge to European healthcare systems and the labour market due to productivity loss that can lead to increased labour shortage. 

Since the beginning of the conversations, EU lawmakers have focused on improving prevention strategies and the benefits this would bring to healthcare systems. 

The report also shows how NCDs entail a big health and financial burden, costing EU economies more than €100 billion annually. 

MEPs highlight that despite the evidence of prevention benefits, the EU average for investment in preventive care stood at 2.8% of total health expenditure in 2018. 

Importance of prevention early diagnosis 

The Parliament now calls on member states to reduce undiagnosed NCDs by introducing targeted health checks for high-risk individuals at the primary healthcare level through better access to public healthcare and better disease management and treatment. 

The text also “invites the member states to work together, especially in cross-border regions and isolated areas, to reduce social and geographical inequalities in NCD early diagnosis services” and encourages national governments to provide regular information to the public risks and on the need for regular checks and examinations.

To identify high-risk individuals, EU lawmakers have included the risk factors that contribute to NCDs in all their discussions and should be monitored to help with prevention and timely diagnosis. 

The European Union aligns with the World Health Organisation (WHO), which states that  “an important way to control NCDs is to focus on reducing risk factors associated with these diseases”. 

The WHO identifies the leading causes of NCDs as “a few common behavioural risk factors” such as tobacco use, alcohol consumption, unhealthy diet and insufficient physical activity. These factors, in turn, lead to “common biological risk factors” like high blood pressure, high blood glucose, high blood cholesterol, and overweight and obesity.

Alcohol controversy 

While lawmakers in the European Parliament agreed on the importance of addressing these factors, the main controversy lay in the terminology included in the report regarding the consumption of alcohol. 

With no doubts about its inclusion in the report, the issue comes over the language that should be used, debating if a certain threshold of alcohol consumption should be designated as “harmful”.

This debate made WHO release an unprecedented statement and send a letter to the members of the public health committee of the Parliament warning of the risks of watering down the approach. 

“The terminology of ‘moderate and responsible drinking information’ or ‘harmful consumption of alcohol’ is scientifically inaccurate and worrisome in the context of cancer prevention,” the WHO letter reads.

WHO declares that “no level of alcohol consumption is safe when it comes to human health”.

The first set of amendments mentioned alcohol use, without any accompanying label, however, the wording was changed in the last version of the text. 

“I cannot in good conscience, as a medical doctor in public health, not follow the latest scientific evidence. I truly believe that if we’re here in politics, we need to also take our decisions based on the best available evidence out there”, Sara Cerdas, Portuguese socialist MEP, told Euractiv after the vote where she abstained. 

She explained that while being an overall good report addressing NCDs the debate ended up being just about vocabulary. 

“We weren’t talking about banning anything or any recommendations. We weren’t talking about anything other than terminology and even correct scientific terminology did not pass”, she regretted. 

[Edited by Alice Taylor]

Read more with Euractiv