EU Commission grants €2.5m to WHO for seven projects under Public Health Programme

The European Commission and the World Health Organisation (WHO) will sign today contracts for seven new joint projects worth a total of €4,242,963, 60% of which is funded by the Commission's Public Health Programme.

The contracts cover EU health policy priorities on environment and health, injuries, equity in health, health security, health services, alcohol and emergency services. The projects will be implemented by WHO Europe over the next three years.

Markos Kyprianou, Commissioner for Health said: "We are WHO's third biggest donor, and there are hundreds of EC/WHO collaborative projects around the world. Today the Commission is allocating a substantial grant from its Public Health Programme to the WHO for seven important projects over the next three years. These seven projects will benefit EU citizens by advancing health policy knowledge in important areas, including alcohol related harm, injury prevention and disparities in health systems performance. They will also benefit non-EU citizens by assessing health crisis preparedness plans in neighbouring countries."

The Commission's Director for Public Health, Andrzej Rys, and WHO's Deputy Regional Director for Europe, Nata Menabde, will sign the contracts this afternoon at WHO's EU office in Brussels. With contributions totaling $102million (over €75million) in 2006, the Commission is the third largest extra-budgetary contributor to WHO.

For more information see:
http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_international/int_organisations/who_en.htm

http://www.who.int/bfi/ExtraBud/acg060b.pdf

| Arriba |

• WHO Director General Chan makes first visit to EU Commission to discuss enhanced collaboration on health (8/6/2007)
• EU Commission-funded programme wins WHO Award (17/11/2006)
• "Tackling obesity in Europe" - WHO Conference opening address by EU Commissioner Kyprianou (15/11/2006)