Estonia is a member of WHO since 31st March of 1993 and membership along with Constitution was ratified by Estonian parliament on February 20. 2005. Estonia is part of European Regional Office.

Regionalization is a special feature of WHO’s organizational structure. Geographic areas serve as a framework for six regional organizations, as provided for in the WHO Constitution. The regional organizations provide a more specific response to the challenges faced by countries in broadly similar circumstances. Each such organization consists of a regional committee for regional decision-making and a secretariat or regional office for carrying out decisions at the regional level.

The Regional Office staff currently number about 650. Collectively, we possess the technical and managerial skills necessary to develop and implement the approved programme of work. The diversity of our professional backgrounds and experience ensures that a vast pool of knowledge is at the service of Member States. The main purpose of the WHO Regional Office for Europe is to serve our Member states. The focus in programmes and activities is in meeting country-defined needs. To meet these objectives, Country Offices are established in 29 Member States.

WHO activities in Estonia

World Health Organization has supported health system development in Estonia since 1993 when Estonia joined WHO after regained independence. During nineties health care reforms were supported by WHO in close collaboration with other international partners as World Bank and national authorities.  Currently WHO is one of the few international agencies who have permanent representation in Estonia which joined European Union in 2004. Main cooperation is developed on technical support in key reform areas; evaluation of changes taken place during last decade; and providing knowledge sharing role to learn from other countries experiences. This has been selected as there is need for further fine tuning of complex health system to perform better. For this more strategic focus and health systems approach is applied focusing more on health system outcomes and long term sustainability. The strategic agenda focuses on:

Development of health policy and implementing strategies.  This area includes several supportive activities as promoting stewardship and policy development; increasing awareness and developing capacities on policy development and implementation; providing analytical support on strategically important topics; analyzing and developing the organizational model of public health services; and measuring health systems performance.

Health financing and sustainability. WHO provides analytical and policy support (e.g. analysis of financial sustainability and broadening the number of sources to ensure sufficient funding, moving towards universal coverage, and improvement of purchasing function) and attends in process to develop recommendations for health financing reforms to improve equity and financial protection. In addition to increase the performance of the health system, the financial flow and cost-effectiveness analysis is supported in health care and public health.

Health services delivery. WHO provides analytical support to measure primary health care performance and to improve further the primary health care system with the aim to broaden the scope and access to services; to develop models for integrated care and improvement of quality; to restructure hospital system and to develop long term and nursing services with linkages to social support networks.

Human resources for health and resource generation. This includes support to policy development and implementation through capacity building to improve the quality of human resources for health system management and public health services; in addition support is provided to develop further pharmaceutical sector as training local experts and share the experience on policies related to pricing and other features related to medicines.

Communicable diseases, HIV/AIDS, and TB prevention and treatment. Support is provided to the strategy development; for external monitoring and evaluating of current situation to make clear suggestions for improvement; improving local monitoring capacities; strategic support to increase access to prevention and treatment (pricing, comparisons, legal instruments); implementation of therapeutic consensus and sharing best practices; HIV/AIDS and TB joint planning exercises and preparation of guidelines; to prepare modern communicable diseases monitoring and surveillance system; to assess the preparedness of the current system.

Reducing environmental and life-cycle related risk factors for population health. Support is provided in several areas to share best practices and update national plans according to international agreements and national situation in the areas of environment and health; addressing non-communicable diseases, mental health and lifestyles (promotion of health for children and youth, nutrition, alcohol, tobacco, improving chronic disease management). To support implementation of national strategies the external evaluation with suggestions is provided.

WHO Biennial Collaborative Agreement with Estonia

The Biennial Collaborative Agreement (BCA) is a formal, signed agreement between the Regional Office and a Member State on strategic collaboration for the next biennium. It is produced through a process of negotiation, and its strategic dimension is measured in expected outcomes and products to be delivered through this collaboration.

• WHO Regional Office for Europe
   
• Estonian country information in WHO Regional Office for Europe

Up