EU-Asean Business Council pushes for more accessible healthcare
In line with this year’s theme for Asean, “Advancing Partnership for Sustainability”, the EU-Asean Business Council (EU-ABC) on Sunday launched the first paper by its Healthcare Advocacy Group entitled, “Driving Comprehensive Healthcare in Asean”.
The paper focuses on making healthcare more readily accessible to Asean citizens in a cost-effective and affordable way.
Commenting on the EU-ABC’s recommendations set out in the paper, Donald Kanak, chairman of the EU-ABC, said that there is immense potential for the healthcare industry, one of the five priority sectors in Asean. The EU-ABC is fully supportive of the strategic goals of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) to achieve quality and affordable healthcare. To reach these goals, the private and public sectors must work together to create better health infrastructure, more transparent regulatory processes and greater harmonisation of standards across the bloc. This will help Asean prepare for rapidly ageing populations and ensure a financially sustainable health system.
Executive director of the EU-Asean Business Council, Chris Humphrey, added that the increasing health protection gap that households face threatens the sustainability of healthcare systems, especially with the growing demands for healthcare. This burden can be alleviated through improving market access for international companies, which will spur innovation and competition, and reviewing current health policies and regulation to make healthcare-related products and services more readily accessible while maintaining high levels of safety in the administration of alternative healthcare.