Honourable Vice Minister of Health Mrs She Jing,
Distinguished guests and contributors,
Dear seminar participants,

Good health is a prerequisite for a good life. It is also a determinant for a country’s productive capacity and ability to build and sustain general welfare for its people – today and tomorrow. Good health secures our common future.

Every country has a health care system of their own. On the international level, countries and organisations engage in cooperation in health, for instance under the auspices of the World Health Organization. Yet, there are numerous and different ways of approaching the goal of good health.

With our mere 4.5 million inhabitants, Norway is a small country with an open economy, in many respects influenced by events taking place in other parts of the world. We are quite dependent on monitoring the international development in health problems as well as the medical science and technology, to combat our health problems. It is evident that the best health policy is to prevent the need for treatment. Many of the problems we see in Norway and many other countries today derive from an unhealthy life style. We have targeted tobacco control, reduced consumption of alcohol, more healthy diet and more physical exercise as important parts of the Norwegian public health policy. These targets relate to aspects of the typical Western lifestyle today.

But no matter how well we succed in prevention and in moblising the resources of people to look after their own health, we need well-functioning health services. Our medical doctors, hospitals, researchers and health workers put remarkable efforts into this overall objective.

We do however need to improve. That is the case today, and I believe it will always be the case. All countries have unsolved problems in health, whether in respect of access to health services for everyone, of improving the services provided, or of developing and adapting the organisation and management of the health care system to meet prevailing new demands. In our efforts to continuously improve, it is my sincere conviction that we have to look across each others’ borders. We have to collect knowledge from experiences and lessons learnt by others, and transform that knowledge to practical solutions suited to our own circumstances. We have to seek knowledge where it exists. We have to go international.

This perspective was also shared by my predecessor as Minister of Health, Mr Høybråten, who together with Minister of Health Mr Zhang Wenkang signed a Memorandum on health cooperation between China and Norway. This event took place in Beijing in April last year. I am very pleased that this seminar has managed to pull him out from his office as General Director of National Insurance Administration to join us here today.

Norway has a particular interest for the Chinese heritage often referred to as "Traditional Chinese Medicine", but I am afraid Norwegians have been a little selective in what we have concentrated on. In Norwegian terms, particularily acupuncture is an important part of what we technically refer to as Alternative Medicine. When valid scientific documentation of the medical effect of treatment will be generally available, acupuncture and other methods will no longer be considered as "Alternative", but rather as an integral part of modern Medicine. The academically strong delegation from China present at this seminar, will no doubt contribute to bring our understanding forward on this topic through their many lectures Tuesday and Wednesday.

It should also be mentioned, as many of you may know, that parts of the Norwegian Alternative Medicine Comission visited China in 1998. Both the Parliament´s standing Comitte for Social affairs, representatives of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs and numerous Norwegian students and scholars have visited China in recent years to study Traditonal Chinese Medicine. Among those scholars, I would like to mention Professor Vinjar Fønnebø, the Chair presiding over this seminar Tuesday and Wednesday. He has a central office as leader of the new Alternative Medicine Centre at the University of Tromsø, and already takes part in the work on scientific methodolgy in this field initiated by the World Health Organization. Let me take this opportunity to congratulate the University and the Norwegian Research Council with this achievement, and also to welcome the coordinator for Traditional Medicine in the WHO, Dr. Xiaorui Zhang Xiaorui ("kjæovri tsjang"), to the seminar.

The cooperation between China and Norway needs to be further developed after this seminar, as we have agreed to elaborate a two years’ plan of action to follow up on the intentions in the Memorandum of understanding. The Memorandum covers principally all kinds of public health services, but there may be a need for setting some priorities. At this seminar we try to link institutions in both countries which we belive are well suited to go forward in bilateral cooperation. Academic exchange will anyhow be essential in the follow up of the Memorandum.

So far, I have emphasised the Traditional Chinese Medicine aspects of the seminar programme. But we will start the lectures by an introduction to the Chinese health care, given by Mr. Liu Xinming, who is Director General in the Ministry of Health. I am sure his introduction will give us an understanding of the context the lectures tomorrow and Wednesday relates to, and deviate from our situation in Norway, which will be presented later today.

I belive in reciprocity in cooperation. Therefore, we want to share with our Chinese guests some experiences we have earned during decades of building up the Norwegian health service, and the challenges we now face. Maybe some of our lessons learnt will be useful to China, as the rapid economic growth in that country may give rise to notable health reforms. Ambassador Dr. Harald Siem will lecture on the long historical perspecitive in the build-up of the local health services in Norway. Thereafter, we will have three shorter presentations on current health reforms in Norway:

• the new law on patient´s rights
• the improvement of mental health care by increased resources and new law
• and the regular general practitioner scheme

I would like to mention that we also will implement new laws regulating health personell, specialist health services and pharmasies. In general, we try to modernise the entire health sector.

No matter how well we reshape our services, Norway will face a lot of challenges within the health sector in the forthcoming years. The advances of modern technology open a big gulf between what is theoretically possible in medical treatment, and what is economically feasible. The patients will surely demand the best, but how shall the health authorities deal with this without draining the economic foundation of the welfare state? How shall we deal with the ethical dilemmas of our new knowledge on the human genome? How shall the doctors deal with patients who get information on alternative treatments on the internet, and in what ways shall we face the private market for health advice and treatment opportunities presented on the internet? I do not know the answers to all these questions, but I am confident that Professor Olav Helge Førde will give us some keys to understanding the challenges we are facing, through his lecture before lunch.

Both Mr. Førde and Mr. Fønnebø are professors at the Tromsø University, the northernmost university in the world. This university will, I hope, soon be recognized as a World Health Organization collaborating center for telemedicine. Telemedicine and health informatics can be a powerful tool for overcoming geographical and administrative barriers, and hopefully telemedicine can save patients from long and hazardous journeys to specialists, particularly in tough weather conditions.

The same University is also a forerunner in integrating so-called "problem based learning" in the education of medical doctors. Although on a smaller scale than in China, we are also in Norway much concerned with levelling out regional differences in health care and other aspects of welfare. The founding of this university in the north of Noway is one of the most succesful measures we have implemented in this respect. The university has served the Northern periphery well with recruitment of professionals, not the least in medicine.

I hope, by these comments and descriptions, that I have given our Chinese guests some examples which can illustrate the setting in which the Norwegian health care system functions. I wish us all a fruitful seminar, and look forward to a closer cooperation between our two countries.

Thank you for your attention!