SDG 3
Ensure a healthy life for all people of all ages and promote their well-being.
§Needs-based staff allocation systems in care
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlightet the deficits in health care. Significant reforms are required to permanently correct them. Initial steps towards more personnel in the care sector and better workimg conditions have been taken over the last few years with various legislative initiatives and the Concerted Action on Care (KAP).The survey commissioned by the Legislator on the developement of scientific criteria to establish staffing demand in long-term care was another important step in this direction. Using this calculation base, a considerable demand for additional staff in long-term care was identified and will be adressed with initial measures. However, such initiatives are not enough to end the lack of care staff. What is still needed is a clear signal that tangible workload relief can be expected for bedside care staff. For the hospital area, a nationwide staff allocation system has to be introduced which enables staffing requirements to be worked out on the basis of individuals to be cared for and which standardises Germany’s prevalent patchwork. Only with greater volumes of personnel in all sectors can care staff be relieved of their present workload and correspondingly devote sufficient time to care. Such a measure can also counter the relocation of care staff to other professions, and care staff who have left the profession can be regained. In addition, wages need to be substantially raised. This could contribute to more young people opting for training in the caring professions. Only in this manner can the situation of both care staff and the people they are looking after be improved.
For further reading and discussion:
The reconciliation of care and professional work is turning into a growing challenge in society. Out of the current roughly 3.4 million people in need of care in Germany, around three quarters are looked after at home, being cared for mainly by relatives. An increasing proportion of the caring relatives are of a working age. The current regulations on the reconciliation of care and profession, in which the time provided for care and family care is far too short, do not offer any sufficient financial security and are only rarely resorted to. Thus gainfully employed relatives of people in need of care are frequently left to their own devices. It is high time to provide better financial and social security for loss of employment time for care commitments. The “Independent Advisory Council on the Reconciliation of Care and Profession” appointed by the German Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ) has proposed a good framework with conditions for caring relatives who are gainfully employed. The proposals centre on the option for a leave of absence for up to 36 months – given a minimum working time of 15 hours a week. Within this period, it would also be possible for up to six months to fully take leave from gainful employment or do so with a minimum working time of below 15 hours a week. Individuals who are gainfully employed and provide care privately are to be supported financially by wage replacement benefits designed along the lines of parental allowance and to be claimed for up to 36 months.
For further reading and discussion:
§ Financially secure leave of absence to reconcile care work and professional work
§Banning poisonous additives in plastics
Many chemicals used to manufacture plastics are extremely poisonous. Since the chemicals are not firmly bonded in the plastic, they can gradually escape, enter into the environment and are also absorbed by the human body. Hormonally effective agents have especially far-reaching impacts in this context. Among them are plasticisers (phthalates), bisphenol A (BPA), brominated flame retardants and stannates. These and other agents are suspected to cause diseases such as diabetes, adiposity, sterility, cancer and heart diseases. The use of these agents, and their substitutes if they are identical in terms of their composition and/or effects, has to be banned by law, so that environmental and health protection along the entire life cycle of a product can be ensured. Special attention has to be given to particularly vulnerable groups such as pregnant people and children, who are exposed to a considerable degree to dangerous agents in plastic products. A full declaration and disclosure has to be given of the substances contained in the products/their packaging and used during processing.
For further reading and discussion:
https://www.wecf.org/de/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/wege_aus_der_plastikkrise_forderungen.pdf
https://hej-support.org/hormongifte-stoppen/
Producers from Germany are exporting pesticides to countries outside the EU not allowed to be used within the EU because of their danger to humans and the environment. This double standard in pesticide trade is at the expense of people’s health in the importing countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa. In France, a law has already been adopted (Act No. 2018-938 – EGalim Act) which, as of January 2022, outlaws the production, storing and trading of pesticides containing agents not approved in the EU for health and environmental protection reasons. In 2020, the Swiss Federal Council also passed an export ban on five pesticide agents prohibited in France. The European Union’s planned chemicals strategy contains a commitment to preventing the export of dangerous chemicals banned in the EU and, for this purpose, to amend relevant legislation should this be necessary. Furthermore, a March 2020 report by the Research Services of the German parliament arrives at the conclusion that conditions exist in Germany for restrictions similar to those in France. For example, based on § 25 para. 3 cl. 2 of the Plant Protection Law, in certain circumstances, the German Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) has the power to prohibit the export of pesticides to Third Countries outside the EU. From this legal basis, a decree ought to be passed prohibiting the export of pesticides that are not authorised or permitted in the EU and/or Germany due to the environmental and health risks they pose.
For further reading and discussion:
www.inkota.de/studie-bayer-basf
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26063&LangID=E
https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/ToxicWaste/Communications/OL-DEU-09-02-21.pdf
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/pdf/chemicals/2020/10/Strategy.pdf
§ Ban on the export of illigal pesticides
§ Amending the Blood Transfusion Law
Blood donations save lives. And yet, in Germany, certain groups are still banned from donations. The Transfusion Law and the German Medical Association’s guidelines on obtaining blood and blood components and on applying blood products have to be changed, and discrimination must be abolished, so that every healthy person in Germany who would like to help can do so. Inquiries should no longer be made regarding sexual orientation when blood donations are offered. To ensure safety for recipients of blood donations, a statement could be required on the frequency of sexual intercourse partners changing and sexually risky behaviour – for this is what counts regarding an individual’s belonging to a risk group. Many other countries, such as Bulgaria, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Portugal and Spain handle it in this manner
For further reading and discussion:
https://www.lsvd.de/de/ct/1321-Ausschluss-schwuler-und-bisexueller-Maenner-von-der-Blutspende
With temporal monopolies, patents guarantee pharmaceutical industry high prices and corresponding profits worldwide. The research incentives this is supposed to create are unequally distributed. People’s health problems in the Global South are neglected by the patent-driven research system owing to their lower purchasing power. The same applies to important but less lucrative research areas such as vaccination or antibiotics research. Above all, for people in the Global South patents prevent access to research results and new technologies and often make medicine unaffordable. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one third of all patients worldwide has no access to necessary medications because of high prices and other structural obstacles. A legally established lifting of patent protection for all essential medications could counter this.
For further reading and discussion:
https://www.patents-kill.org/deutsch/
http://med4all.org/images/downloads/Leitfaden-sozialvertrgliche-Verwertung-2018.pdf