6.4.2022
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
C 152/119
4.5.
The pandemic crisis has shown that there is a shortage of health workers.
The EESC reiterates that particular attention should be paid to improving their working conditions, including wages, education, reskilling and updated training, access to childcare facilities, ensuring the highest possible safety standards as well as the possibility for all professions, including in the health sector, to live, move and work freely across the EU (3).
Since 76 % of health workers and 84 % of nurses in the EU are women, there is a need for gender transformative policies to address barriers to access to full-time employment, address the gender pay gap, promote retention in the sector and support access to professional development and leadership roles.
Special procedures shall be developed to enable the rapid and safe recruitment of medical staff from countries outside the European Union in critical situations.
4.6.
Regarding the EU Strategic Framework on health and safety at work 2021-2027, the EESC welcomes the strong recommendation of the European Commission towards Member States to recognise Covid-19 as an occupational disease, but emphasises the need for revising the recommendation to include all workers exposed to infection without adequate protection, including mobile and migrant workers, and seasonal workers in unsafe workplaces and unsanitary accommodation.
4.7.
The EESC will closely follow the implementation of the European Health Union, and recommends taking into account the link between animal health and human health.
This cooperation also highlights the fact that, due to the cross-border nature of pandemics, only uniform, well-coordinated action can be effective and successful, based on common recognition.
4.8.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a fragmented, uncoordinated approach to clinical trials in Europe.
The EESC notes that a pan-European approach can make it possible to streamline clinical trial procedures and processes, particularly tests of new candidate drugs for effective and accessible therapeutics.
A large-scale European platform for clinical trials can be a solution here.
4.9.
According to scientific research data and attendance statistics in health care, the COVID-19 crisis may result in a significant increase in psychological risk, which may in turn also increase the development of psychosomatic diseases.
This new morbidity phenomenon as well as the yet understudied effects of the long COVID syndrome must be taken into account in the health systems of all EU Member States.
4.10.
Preventing, preparing for and responding to pandemics are priorities for Europe.
The EESC believes that the EU should continue to respond to the crisis in a consistent and global manner, in particular through COVAX as well as new candidate drugs and therapies, and to strengthen and support the global health security architecture.
This must also strengthen the EU’s role in the World Health Organization.
In this context, in order to respond to the urgent needs of developing countries in particular, the EESC asks the EC to lead an open debate at European level on a temporary TRIPS voluntary waiver, that would apply to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests, in order to enable the ramping up global vaccine production and the lowering of costs to ensure access for people across the world.
4.11.
With regard to the first experiences formulated in the EC communication on health, the EESC considers that there is a painful failure to state that the availability of interventions and services to deal with health stress is uneven, without the necessary focus on vulnerable groups; in many senses this has only been amplified by the COVID-19 crisis.
Equal access to and availability of services should not only be an evaluation criterion, but could save lives.
5.
Social and societal aspects 5.1.
In 2021, we have seen inequalities between women and men deepen across Europe, particularly as a result of the alarming surge in cases of violence against women accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lockdown and isolation measures have created an enabling environment for abusers’ coercive control of victims and have led to incidents of physical, psychological and sexual violence against women and girls, with limited access to support services for victims; this has been referred to as a ‘shadow pandemic’.
The EESC calls on the European Commission to adopt a comprehensive framework to prevent and combat all forms of violence against women and girls from a feminist, gender-sensitive and intersectional perspective in order to make sure that in the event of a future health crisis a shadow pandemic is prevented.
(3)
OJ C 286, 16.7.2021, p. 109.