Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County

Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg, situated in the north east of Hungary, has been a full member of the RHN since 1993. The county’s total population is about 590,000 and it covers about 6000 square kilometres. The Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg region is mainly rural in character and its predominant industry is focused on food production – fruit, especially apples, meat and dairy products.

The county’s responsibility for health involves the adoption and realization of the national health policy. There is a regional strategy for the realization of Health for All, aiming not only to achieve a high standard of general health but also to make health information accessible to all and provide equal chances for living a healthy life. This is hampered by the fact that health is currently not a subject of interest for the many people living in the region.

Main Health Policies:

Improving health status has an overriding importance for regional development. Analysing health status we have in mind two basic principles:

1. health status is influenced mainly not by the healthcare system but by social and lifestyle factors;
2. the health status of the population is a very complex phenomenon, so we must consider a variety of indices to understand it.

At the beginning of the 1990s Hungary underwent a democratic and an economic transformation. There were inevitably losers in this process, and society has a duty to look after them. It became clear that some regions were also disadvantaged, especially those with an agricultural character, including Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county. Within the county inequalities grew, and the number of people needing social care has also increased considerably.

Priorities:

The social-economic crisis in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county has been most evident in the decline of quality of life for the population. The basic strategy being used to address this is economic development, which should influence quality of life in the long run. In the short term, there is a need to tackle the following important problems:

- according to most morbidity and mortality indices the health, social and mental status of the county is below the national average;
- the unemployed, Roma ethnic groups, addicts and those layers of society facing multiple deprivation face immediate problems that need to be resolved
- the social care system is overburdened, and in some smaller settlements or regions (mainly in the periphery of the county) even primary care is difficult to access.