The finishing touches to a reshuffle of the Directorate General for Health and Food Safety (DG Sante), approved by Commissioners on Wednesday and effective from 1 February, will see the number of units within the 960-person directorate reduced to 38 from 40, providing more staff in some areas.
Several senior officials have been reassigned and parts of Sante given expanded responsibilities.
Public health is now ‘public health, country knowledge, crisis management’ while a renamed directorate for, ‘health systems, medical products and innovation,’ will sit at the centre of the Commission’s plans to strengthen its country assessment of health systems, as Sante Director-General Xavier Prats Monné described to Science|Business in December.
The intention is to collect data on public health performance, health technology effectiveness, and patient outcomes with greater country-to-country consistency than previously.
Another change to the organisation sees animal, food and plant crisis management grouped together in a new directorate. There is also a new directorate for food safety.
New DG SANTE structure. Current one online here
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