Eurocarers: Letter to expert panel on investing in health

On the European Carers’ Day, Eurocarers has sent a letter to the chair of the Expert Panel on Better Ways of Investing in Health,  who is currently working on care organisation following the COVID19 pandemic. While welcoming this work and its focus, we ask the experts to seriously consider the heavy impact of the COVID-19 crisis on informal carers.

The letter stresses that the COVID-19 crisis and the policy responses to it have done nothing but to aggravate the challenges facing carers. Confinement measures and the reallocation of professional care services to the most severe cases have indeed greatly enhanced carers’ isolation and have deprived them of their usual support systems – when they existed. As a result, many carers have found themselves in first line in the provision of care to dependent people and despite the fact that, statistically speaking, a large portion of carers belongs to the most at-risk age groups. Therefore, we ask the expert panel to consider carers as part of the vulnerable people. Of course, we also offer to share more information as we continue to carry out our own research on the impact of the pandemic on informal carers across Europe. Read Eurocarers’ Letter-to-expert-panel-on-investing-in-health-October-2020.pdf.