What exactly happened in the short one Time span between the Monday demonstrations, the opening of the Wall and October 3, 1990? How are the decisions made at that time to be assessed from distance of 20 years? Was the course set correctly in the subsequent years of development? The Deutsches Ärzteblatt spoke about it with numerous actors and contemporary witnesses from politics, the medical profession and science. The result is the series of articles on German unity, which began in June of last year and so far comprises 13 articles (available at www./einheit).
From changing perspective, it is always about the question of whether more elements and facilities of the GDR health system were not worth preserving - for example the mandatory vaccination, the community nurses and the tumor register. The standard example to substantiate criticism of the all too hasty takeover of the West German system are the polyclinics. Finally, they are now coming to life again in the form of medical care centers. Not only the politicians of the time of the fall of the wall confirm that under the time pressure of the time, conceptual innovations were illusory. After the end of the enclosed society - as Tellkamp describes it in his bestselling novel “The Tower” - the doctors wanted one thing above all else: freedom. Not least because of this, there was the unprecedented wave of settlements in the new federal states in the early 1990s.
In the official balance sheet of the federal government on the anniversary it is rightly said that in the new federal states in A modern healthcare infrastructure was created and the number of doctors there has risen by 23 percent to 45,865 since 1993. Together with better environmental conditions, especially the reduction in air pollution, they have contributed to improving the health of the population. The mortality rate from cardiovascular diseases, for example, has decreased more in the east than in west Germany. At the time of reunification, life expectancy in the east was around two years lower for women and three years for men than in the west. Meanwhile, women in East and West live almost the same length. At 76.09 years, men have not yet quite reached the life expectancy in the West of 77.42 years.
What exactly happened in the short one Time span between the Monday demonstrations, the opening of the Wall and October 3, 1990? How are the decisions made at that time to be assessed from distance of 20 years? Was the course set correctly in the subsequent years of development? The Deutsches Ärzteblatt spoke about it with numerous actors and contemporary witnesses from politics, the medical profession and science. The result is the series of articles on German unity, which began in June of last year and so far comprises 13 articles (available at www./einheit).
From changing perspective, it is always about the question of whether more elements and facilities of the GDR health system were not worth preserving - for example the mandatory vaccination, the community nurses and the tumor register. The standard example to substantiate criticism of the all too hasty takeover of the West German system are the polyclinics. Finally, they are now coming to life again in the form of medical care centers. Not only the politicians of the time of the fall of the wall confirm that under the time pressure of the time, conceptual innovations were illusory. After the end of the enclosed society - as Tellkamp describes it in his bestselling novel “The Tower” - the doctors wanted one thing above all else: freedom. Not least because of this, there was the unprecedented wave of settlements in the new federal states in the early 1990s.
In the official balance sheet of the federal government on the anniversary it is rightly said that in the new federal states in A modern healthcare infrastructure was created and the number of doctors there has risen by 23 percent to 45,865 since 1993. Together with better environmental conditions, especially the reduction in air pollution, they have contributed to improving the health of the population. The mortality rate from cardiovascular diseases, for example, has decreased more in the east than in west Germany. At the time of reunification, life expectancy in the east was around two years lower for women and three years for men than in the west. Meanwhile, women in East and West live almost the same length. At 76.09 years, men have not yet quite reached the life expectancy in the West of 77.42 years.
East Germans give medical care good grades. However, they are more dissatisfied with their other living conditions than West Germans, and they also leave greater distance to the Recognize the political system. Is internal unity still long way off? Anyone who is 30 years old or younger today will not worry about it, but look to the future. This generation, which divided Germany at most from childhood or not at all knows, will have to cope with the problems of decreasing and also aging population in the coming decades, exacerbated in eastern Germany by the emigration of young qualified workers. Services of general interest under these conditions - ensuring good medical care in rural areas, for example - that is the challenge of unified Germany.
Heinz Stüwe Editor-in-Chief
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