EU-Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis visiting SHARE meeting

SHARE Wave 7 Post-Pretest Meeting, 16 to 18 March 2016, Vilnius, Lithuania

On 17 March 2016 the European Commissioner for Health & Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis honored the work of the SHARE researches and attended the SHARE meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, which prepared the upcoming cross-country harmonized survey wave on health and life circumstances across Europe. Teams from 28 countries and the central coordination team from Munich participated in the meeting.

The Commissioner held a welcome speech about the importance of exploring the demographic ageing. He stressed that providing more and better data is an important goal to build up international and country-specific knowledge.

“Prevention is better than cure”, Commissioner Andriukaitis said.

The Commissioner stated that the aim must be to provide people with an environment that enables them to make healthy choices and live in good health in old age. Additionally it is essential to prepare the health systems on the needs of ageing societies. The current health systems are not sufficiently prepared to deal with aging, the Commissioner explained.

Health systems must ensure the necessary quality of care to all citizens. Therefore, systems have to be modernized and consider the needs of older citizens. The Commissioner explained that it is important to support older people to stay in good health, to remain independent and to be able to participate in society.

SHARE data and the analyses based upon them are an important source of evidence which helps our ageing countries to better cope with the health challenges.Commissioner Andriukaitis emphasized: “The results of this initiative for the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe will no doubt contribute to our collective heritage to better design and manage the health systems of tomorrow.”

Juras Požela, the Minister of Health of The Republic of Lithuania, Prof. Juozas Kulys Member of Research Council of Lithuania, Chairman of National research programme “Healthy Ageing” and Prof. Rimantas Jankauskas, Vice-Rector at Vilnius University, attended the SHARE meeting together with the Commissioner and underlined the significance of Lithuania being a member of SHARE. Wave 7 will be the first data collection for the Lithuanian country team of SHARE.

SHARE is very happy to welcome Lithuania!

Please view >>herethe whole speech of the Commissioner.