Development of Accessibility towards Packaging with a Commercial Focus 

Lene Witte

The Danish Rheumatism Association

Gentoftegade 118, 2880 Gentofte, Denmark

Tel: +45 39778036    Fax: 39651197
Email: lwitte@gigtforeningen.dk

Biography 

2000-; Managing Director of The Danish Rheumatism Association

1995-2000; Deputy Permanent Secretary, The Danish Ministry of Culture. Working areas within media legislation, sports, cultural politics within voluntary work and disability, intellectual property rights, cultural exchange and Nordic co-operation.

1991-95; Secretary general in WWF, World Wide Fund for Nature, Denmark

1978-91; The Danish Ministry of the Environment

(1988-89 Ministry of Health) as principal, personal secretary to the minister and head of office.

Working areas within legislation of land use, food legislation and biotechnology.

1975-78; Secretary to the management in ISS, ISS Facility Services A/S

1974; Bachelor of Laws from University of Copenhagen

Company Profile 

The Danish Rheumatism Association was established in 1936 and has today 75,000 members. A lot of them are active as representatives for the cause of rheumatism in our 22 local sections. Six times a year we publish our magazine “LedSager” which is distributed to members, doctors, the press etc. We also publish a number of pamphlets with facts about the most widespread rheumatic deseases. We offer a free telephone counsel service, GigtLinien, run a hospital and three sanatoriums, and fund one third of the rheumatic research in Denmark as well as offer certain types of financial support to people with rheumatism. Visit us at www.gigtforeningen.dk.

Abstract

In 2005 The Minister of Consumer Affairs, Lars Barfoed, established a national working group among consumers, branch organizations, handicap organizations, authorities and more user-friendly packaging in Denmark and in an EU perspective.

As a result of the work in the national group, The National Consumer Agency expects to be able to start a national project, which is to describe a number of business cases in order to get more packaging, but a number of principles could probably be used in other branches, such as pharmaceutical and medical packaging.

The project is expected to be carried out in 2006/2007, and we expect to be able to present some preliminary results on the conference in May 2007.