Comments related to actual legal obligation of district health planning

Abstract

At European level, the Hungarian legal obligation to elaborate a district-level health plan is pioneering support for local health protection. However, meeting the requirements of this legal obligation has been problematic. One of the major difficulties isthat the obligation related to elaboration of health plan falls to the city, while the scope of the plan should relate to the entire district surrounding the city. A further limitation is that the district does not have any governing function. Therefore, it cannot have any board of elected representatives that would approve and initiate the measures of the health plan, supervise its implementation, and provide the resources needed for action. In addition, the national public health programme is also missing, which should be the basis for any level of strategic planning, and to which the district plans could adapt with own target system and priorities. Consequently, potential methods of health planning cannot be utilized to the improvement of the population health.