Spain Reveals ‘Component 18’ Plan to Combat Future Global Pandemics

SPAIN HAS revealed the ‘Component 18’ plan to combat future global pandemics, aiming to ensure that the country is prepared should outbreaks arise. The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, presented last Tuesday, May 11 the ‘Component 18’ plan, a strategy which the Government intends to tackle future global pandemics so that the current situation caused by Covid-19 does not recur. Darias commented that “The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the strengths of the health system but also its weaknesses, so this is a fantastic opportunity to improve them.”

The ‘Component 18’ pandemic plan for Spain is a set of actions focused on strengthening and expanding the capacities of the National Health System (SNS) while creating a “European Union for health” and will be carried out thanks to the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan from European funds until 2023. The Government plans to invest 1,069 million euros in this plan to improve the health system, a contribution that represents 1.5% of the total of 69,528 million euros that Spain will invest thanks to the European plan.

The ‘Component 18’ plan includes six main investment areas:

• an investment plan in high technology equipment or the INVEAT Plan (792.1 million euros)
• actions to reinforce prevention and health promotion (62.05 million)
• increased response capacities to health crises (80.91 million euros)
• training of health professionals and resources to share knowledge (13.14 million euros)
• a plan to rationalize the consumption of pharmaceutical products and promote sustainability (20.80 million)
• and a sanitary ‘data lake’ (100 million euros)