National Health Programme
INTRODUCTION
The National Health Programme (NHP) has been implemented and modified
accordingly since 1990(1) . Its first version, adopted by the
Council of Minister's Committe on Economy and Social Policy, was based
on the WHO strategy "Health for all by the year 2000"(2)
.
The NHP attempts, for the first time, to commit governmental bodies,
all sectors of the national economy and the whole society to health promotion,
and its guiding principle is to support and promote prevention (primary,
secondary and tertiary) as a key element of health care, aimed at reversing
the trend of still growing incidence of diseases and excess mortality.
This principle was reflected in eight targets included already in its first
version.
In 1993 the National Health Programme was modified in order "...to
update its objectives and targets and to make them more realistic... to
alter the approach to the attainment of objectives and to issue relevant
executive regulations designed to establish legal mechanisms for financing
and supervising the NHP implementation..."(3). The guiding
principles and the structure of the Programme were also modified.
The development
of the present, namely the third version of the National Health Programme
(for 1996-2005) had been preceded by a thorough analysis and evaluation
of activities undertaken to date by different sectors (4). The
objectives and guiding principles which underpinned the decision to modify
the Programme were the need:
- to adjust the plan of action to presentliving conditions and health needs and problems of the population (e.g.
rapid economic and social changes resulting from the process of transformation
bring about multivarious health hazards);
- to enlarge the body of participants and performers involved in the NHP implementation, with particular reference
to self-governments and local communities;
- to seek more effective means of cooperation between performers at all levels;
- to improve monitoring
and evaluation of the outcomes;
- to benefit from new national and international experiences, and modern methods for health promotion and prevention of
certain diseases.
This Programme, developed by a team of experts in cooperation
with the Intersectoral Task-Force for National Health Programme Coordination,
and the Section of Health Programmes at the Department of Systemic Transformations
in Health Care, Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, adopted by the Council
of Ministers on 3 September 1996 as a governmental document, sets objectives
and guiding principles of the public health policy in Poland by the year
2005.
The concept and structure of individual sections have been slightly
altered in comparison to previous versions, and now it is a flexible programme
which can be further modified and amended without changing the whole document.
Let us hope that the experience gained to date in implementation of the
former versions of the National Health Programme, and better understanding
of the fundamental principle according to which individuals themselves
are, to great extent, responsible for their own health and the health of
the others will contribute to the success of concerted action for better
health and better quality of life in Poland.
Ryszard Jacek Żochowski
Chairman,
Intersectoral Task-Force
for National Health Programme
Coordination
National Health Programme
