In 2020, our entire modern world has experienced a threat that has not seemed real for many generations. Common threats to life, confinement at home and the inaccessibility of many consumer comforts and gains of civilization have shown how fragile our existence can be. The pandemic wave flooded the world and wiped out the existing image of our civilization.

In Poland, as elsewhere in the world, health care turned out to be the most burdened element, as it yielded to the wave, but did not collapse. In our opinion, this is the sole merit of dedicated employees: doctors, nurses, paramedics and support staff who, despite the threat to health, technical complications, decision chaos and media attacks, continued to do their job the best.

A pandemic like a tsunami has ruthlessly exposed all the shortcomings in planning, organization or financing of services by successive ruling teams that had been going on for years. After this deluge, a new landscape will emerge in which the robust components of the healthcare system continue to exist. There will also be a place to rebuild those that did not survive the test. And this is what we want to discuss during the 16th edition of our Symposium.