FEATURE The future of
Nordic Collaboration in health
After a lifetime as a leading Swedish
politician, including a stint as Minister for Health and Social Insurance, Bo
Könberg was asked by the Nordic Council of Ministers to produce the ‘Könberg Report’, to highlight key areas where cooperation in the Nordic region would
lead to better health outcomes. His brief was to consider every aspect of health and to keep the report short and to the
point. He did just that, making 14 insightful recommendations for greater cooperation between the five Nordic countries. With five of these recommendations already adopted by the Council of Ministers, he speaks to William Davis about
the challenges we face, collaboration, and his fear of antibiotic resistance
I 16
n 2013, The Nordic Council of Ministers asked Bo Könberg to write an independent report on how Nordic cooperation in health services and eHealth development can be enhanced over the next five to 10 years. Although the report
was delivered last year, it still has an impact today. Of course, in his report Könberg is able to focus on some of the most successful and ambitious health programmes in the world and there is already a long track record in collaboration in the region since the Nordic Council of Ministers was created in the 1950s. But as technology develops and as shifts in Nordic society occur, he is convinced that optimising regional competencies and sharing resources has to be the way to maintain high standards.
Könberg admits to being “a little biased” when talking
about the quality of health provision in the Nordic region. He has been a member of the Swedish Liberal party for all his political life and is proud of the fact that he has been instrumental in “many of the good things” in his country’s welfare state, including health. He was also a minister for Health and Social Insurance in Sweden during the 1990s and as such has been involved in many of the collaborative efforts and successes in terms of health as part of the Nordic Council of Ministers. When Könberg started to work on health questions
on the regional level, as part of the Council in Stockholm in the 1970s, Sweden and the USA were the two biggest spenders on health in relation to total
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