3 questions for… Minister of Health Izabela Leszczyna

A particular problem in Poland is excessive mortality due to cardiovascular causes: Poles live shorter than those living in Western Europe, and they also have shorter lifespans. healthy life. This problem mainly affects men. What actions would the Minister like to take to change this unfavorable trend??

Indeed, in Poland we die primarily from cardiological diseases, the second cause is cancer. During a recent meeting with the Zielona Góra Agreement, we talked, among others, about: about including preventive tests in the examinations performed by an occupational medicine doctor. This was probably my third meeting with various entities on this issue. We are now determining what the scope of the research would be and what the costs would be for the National Health Fund, because we obviously do not want to burden employers and entrepreneurs with these costs.

We focus on prevention, we talk about it more and more and we will talk more and more because we have great doctors, so there is no reason for Poles to live shorter. We also have great drug therapies available – as Deputy Minister Miłkowski talked about during the conference. We, patients, must understand that we are responsible for more than half of our health.

Recently, a video was released by the Minister of Sport and the Minister of Education promoting tests to check how fit and active our children and young people are. I think that the Ministry of Health will also be happy to get involved in promoting these issues. We focus on prevention and a healthy lifestyle, we will talk a lot about it and write a lot. We will also reach patients through primary care physicians, but also through school medicine nurses to children and adolescents. I've already talked to them; they will be happy to conduct “health hours”. At the same time, we appoint a small team of several, or at most a dozen, experts to create the program; perhaps we will call it “Preparation for Life.” We want to place great emphasis on health. Not only on sexuality – sexuality is a tiny element; Our health is, of course, everything that “is in our minds”, what we eat and how much we sleep. We are thinking about such a program because we have to learn from childhood that it is worth taking care of ourselves, it is worth fighting for ourselves. Women's Health Week is over, during which we also urged women to take care of themselves, their partners and their children.

A big problem in Poland is low participation in preventive tests. How can this be changed? One of the planned solutions, as you said, would be to combine preventive examinations with occupational medicine…

This is one of the solutions we are thinking about. The second solution that the director of the e-health center came to me with is sending text messages. We will use them to remind you about preventive tests and tell you where you can apply. It would be important to create a central e-registration; advice on where to perform mammography and cytology. And then we will remind you via text messages that you are registered and you need to come for the test.

When would central e-registration be likely to come into force?

When it comes to prevention, we will want it to happen quickly, by the middle of this year. However, when it comes to the possibility of making an appointment via e-registration with all specialists: I cannot answer this question yet.

Questions were asked to Minister Izabela Leszczyna during the meeting
press conference on March 14, 2024