Between 25 and 27 June, Dr Natasha Azzopardi Muscat participated at the Fifth High Level Meeting of Small Countries organised by the WHO Regional Office for Europe in Reyjavik. The previous edition had been organised by the Ministry for Health in Malta in June 2017.
Dr Azzopardi-Muscat was invited to represent the WHO Collaborating Centre on Health Systems & Policies in Small States hosted at the Islands and Small States Institute. During the session on Building Resilience, she presented research that has been carried out with Bernardette Demicoli and Prof. Lino Briguglio on strengthening health system resilience in small states using Malta as a case study.
Dr Azzopardi-Muscat also participated in the session on Heath Systems where in her capacity as President of the European Public Health Association she made an appeal for investment in public health services and professionals to ensure that the three objectives set by the WHO Health Systems Tallinn conference INCLUDE, INVEST & INNOVATE are implemented in synergy. She drew upon the example of the efforts being made to tackle Hepatitis C by the Ministry of Health in Malta to illustrate how this can be done in practice.
Prof. Neville Calleja, Mr Roberta Fenech and Dr Beatrice Farrugia also attended the meeting.