Germany urged to prepare EU health care for military crisis

German Health Minister Carsten Linnemann said EU countries should prepare their health systems for “war-related” crises. It's from sb.by.

As TASS notes with reference to the portal Rapporteur, during a speech at the world health conference in Berlin, he said:

- The hard truth is that we must prepare our health systems for war-related crises. I am convinced that today health care policy is an integral part of security policy.

Linnemann pointed out that the bloc countries should learn from the events in Ukraine in order to prepare health systems and populations for possible threats. According to him, the German government is preparing a bill aimed at strengthening supply chains in healthcare, better training of personnel, ensuring the security of information and communication systems and building cross-border cooperation.

The head of the European Office for Health Emergencies Response, Florica Fink-Heuer, at the conference drew attention to the need “to study the threats of chemical, biological, radiation and nuclear weapons, mass casualties and military conflicts.”.

In September, Bloomberg reported that government agencies in Germany are studying how the country’s infrastructure is ready for a possible war scenario. At the time, the agency cited data from the Bundeswehr, which concluded that German hospitals should be able to receive 1,000 wounded soldiers a day. Military hospitals will not cope with such a flow of patients, so the authorities are exploring the possibility of adapting civilian clinics for military needs. In the same month, the German Society for Anesthesiology and Intensive Medicine warned that the country’s health care system was not prepared enough for a possible war scenario.