Oliva Antonio Calvete
Dirección General de Salud Pública, Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, Madrid, Spain.
Rev Esp Salud Publica. 2008 May-Jun;82(3):273-81.
The member States have exclusive authority over health, but the European Union has the responsibility, pursuant to the provisions of Article 152 of the Treaty, of rounding out the policies of the member Status in order to enhance public health, prevent diseases and avoid sources of hazards to human health, which includes the fight against the most serious, widespread diseases (by supporting the research of their aetiology, their transmission and prevention), as well as health information and education and the surveillance of serious transborder threats to health, alerting in the event of such threats and combating the same. In order to fulfil these obligations, the European Commission presented the White Paper "Together for Health: A Strategic Approach for the EU 2008-2013" on October 23, 2007. But the community-based health strategy has been being taking shape for some time now by means of different documents which have progressively been prefiguring it, thus being the result of long years of continuous work which has been being done since the early nineties. Throughout this time, the Directorate General of Public Health has been taking part in the process of preparing these documents and thus in what is now being presented as the EU health strategy. The main idea around which this work revolves is that there is a patent continuity and clear public health content in both the White Paper and in the documents which preceded it in time.
成员国对卫生事务拥有专属权力，但根据《条约》第152条的规定，欧盟有责任完善成员国的政策，以增进公众健康、预防疾病并避免对人类健康的危害源，这包括（通过支持对其病因、传播和预防的研究）抗击最严重、传播最广泛的疾病，以及卫生信息与教育和对严重跨境健康威胁的监测，在出现此类威胁时发出警报并加以应对。为履行这些义务，欧盟委员会于2007年10月23日发布了白皮书《共同促进健康：欧盟2008 - 2013年战略方针》。但基于共同体的卫生战略已通过不同文件逐步形成有一段时间了，这些文件逐渐勾勒出其轮廓，因此是自九十年代初以来多年持续工作的成果。在此期间，公共卫生总司一直参与这些文件的编写过程，从而也参与了现在作为欧盟卫生战略所呈现的内容。这项工作所围绕的主要理念是，白皮书及其之前的文件在时间上存在明显的连贯性和明确的公共卫生内容。
