The Parliament rejected by 244 votes against, 173 for and 149 abstentions the own-initiative report of Eva-Britt SVENNSON (GUE/NGL, SE) concerning Gender discrimination and health systems. Members were unable to reach agreement on a certain number of sensitive points such as the risk entailed in the harvesting of egg cells, removal of all funding for human cloning or improvements in working conditions in the health services.

The committee adopted the own-initiative report by Eva-Britt SVENSSON ( GUE/NGL, SE) on gender discrimination in health systems. The report stressed that good physical and mental health for all must be a priority objective in all economic and political decision-making and that the focus must be on disease prevention strategies and guaranteed access to adequate health care for everyone. It added that gender must be mainstreamed into all health policies and decision-making processes. The committee then highlighted a number of health issues affecting women in the EU and made a series of recommendations:

- Member States should support initiatives to facilitate access by elderly women to health and medical services and assign priority to early diagnosis of osteoporosis;

- caesarians should be performed only when medically necessary;

- measures should be taken to increase the number of women appointed to leading positions in the medical profession;

- education on gender disparities should be included in the training of healthcare staff;

- preventing female genital mutilation and prosecuting the perpetrators must become a priority in relevant EU policies and programmes;

- the EU and the Member States should continue investing in the development of microbicides to enable women to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS, the incidence of which is spreading in women;

- the Commission and the Member States should focus on reducing heart disease and strokes in women by developing preventive strategies, diagnostic tests, treatment and rehabilitation policies which address women's needs;

- measures to fight breast cancer should be improved, inter alia by ensuring that comprehensive screening programmes in accordance with EU guidelines (mammography screening at two-yearly intervals for all women aged 50-69) are made available as soon as possible in all Member States;

- there should be more gender-specific clinical trials of medicines.

Lastly, the report called for the EU institutions to use standardised data and common indicators to measure gender disparities within health and medical services in the EU.