‘Prosperity is at stake’
“Individually targeted advice” does not achieve the desired result. “It has importance to our entire community, and our prosperity could be at stake,” Rufoet said. Therefore, prevention must be done. “I think it’s very important in the current political climate to say: ‘People, we have to wait, we can’t wait.’ We can’t say: ‘We’ll put this off for a while.’”
Outline agreement
The framework agreement stipulates that putting prevention more centrally, reducing health differences between rich and poor, promoting people’s health, reducing pressure on health care and controlling health care costs are all high on the agenda. But Ruvitt asserts that the financial section actually includes public health cuts amounting to hundreds of millions. “You can’t push it on both sides and make cuts, you won’t be able to.”
Pandemic preparedness
Rufoet suspects that the cuts will also have a significant impact on pandemic preparedness. “If the Cabinet is serious about the ambitions they have written down, we must engage in discussions with each other on how to achieve this and what the financial situation is,” the GGD GHOS president said.
