At the last Federal Council meeting before the summer break, following a recommendation from the Health Committee, the majority in the Federal Council voted in favor of implementing a National Diabetes Plan (NDP), supported by an initiative from the federal states of Schleswig-Holstein, Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony and Thuringia. “Today is a special, almost historic day for German diabetology because we have initiated an opinion-forming process at the federal level. Nevertheless, we know that we have not yet quite reached the goal of establishing a national diabetes plan. Now it’s the federal government’s turn,” explains Prof. Dr. med. Thomas Danne, CEO of diabetesDE. The history of the NDPs is long, not only in Germany but also in Europe, as they have been called for since 1989 in the St. Vincent Declaration (supported by WHO Europe) and in 2006 by the Council of the European Community and the United Nations. Morten Frank Pedersen, Senior Counsel for Government Affairs and Trade Policy Relations at the research-based pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, has been accompanying this often quite difficult process for many years. He knows the problems and developments in the individual European countries very well and explains the background in the MVF interview.

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