Berlin Declaration: German/Chinese Joint Venture in Orthopaedics and Traumatology

Signing of the German/Chinese Joint Venture on 2013/10/22 in Berlin

On 22 October 2013, the Federal Ministry for Health hosted high-ranking representatives of medical-scientific specialist societies from Germany and China who signed a cooperation agreement in the presence of minister secretary Thomas Ilka. The Berlin declaration is intended to stabilise and institutionalise the previous exchange between the German Society for Orthopaedics and Trauma and the Chinese Orthopaedic Association.

Guests of the ministry further included representatives of the leading German medical technology companies without whom efficient treatment and care facilities would not be possible and who want to make a contribution to German-Chinese cooperation.

The German Congress for Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery is being held in Berlin from 21 to 24 October 2013. In parallel, a German-Chinese symposium will be held jointly with the World Orthopaedic Alliance on 23 October 2013. These events include more than one hundred specialist medical experts from China.

One of the goals of this cooperation is to harmonise the currently very uneven levels of medical care in different countries on a high level. Developments that promote the increase of illnesses of the musculoskeletal organs can be monitored on a global level. This includes lack of physical activity from an early age and increasingly inappropriate nutritional habits that lead to overweight as well as accidents with bone fractures that affect many people in their childhood and youth and during their work, leisure time and in road traffic.

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