HEALTH - QUALITY - INNOVATION The European Spas Association (ESPA) is an umbrella Association of national associations and members from 20 European countries. ESPA represents over 2.000 Spas and Health Resorts as well as facilities for cure, prevention, rehabilitation, and Health and Wellness tourism In Europe. The related European market contains, according to ESPA, approximately 12.000 facilities. The industry employs directly and indirectly around 750.000 people and has as annual turnover of approximately €45bn. Spas & Health resorts in Europe have made an important contribution to public health, in many cases for centuries. Apart from medical treatment, they also contains a wide range of cultural amenities and are home to fascinating architechture in a cultural environment, in many cases adjacent to unspoilt countryside, The current pandemic of COVID-19 brings to our society enormous damage of lives, lower quality of health and we expect lowering quality of life in general, caused by the economic crisis that is ahead of us. By monitoring ongoing statistics, opinions of epidemiologists and medical specialists, we meet daily the term vulnerable part of population, which includes seniors in the first place, than people with specific diseases as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, oncological diseases, autoimmune diseases, respiratory diseases and people staying on long-term pharmacotherapy. All these are the most common diseases mainly related to the lifestyle. Insufficient activities in European health policies for primary prevention of so-called lifestyle disease should be a warning for us. Obesity as one of main risk factor for diabetes, cancer, heart diseases, respiratory diseases, and many others is strongly linked with unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, lack of stress management, lack of education in healthy life style - simple say lack of primary health prevention. Medical spas are traditionally focused on improving the quality of life linked to health.
