Milan, 23/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - Patients must be able to benefit at reasonable price from new therapies put on the market and pharmaceutical innovation must be encouraged, stressed Italian Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin in Milan on 23 September, following the informal meeting of European health ministers.
“Joint reflection is essential on how to encourage innovation so that the EU can recover its leadership role”, she stated.
New medicines put on the market are often very costly. This situation was discussed by the Council in Luxembourg in June, leading, on the initiative of France, to concrete action to reduce the price of medicines for hepatitis C (see EUROPE 11105).
Italy sought to go into greater depth, looking at ways of reinforcing the member states' cooperation on prices for innovative drugs, in order to bring pressure to bear on the pharmaceutical companies which develop them, whilst guaranteeing them a comfortable profit margin. It also raised the following question: should we allow all drugs to be placed on the market or should their effectiveness and safety be measured first? The delegations were unanimous: there should be regulatory action in order to secure greater certainty of the effectiveness of new drugs before they are placed on the market and there should continue to be systematic assessments of health technology and medical processes, in order to maintain an efficient health care system which is open to innovation.
Closing the debate, Lorenzin said: “science changes, there are new scientific discoveries. A new approach is created in how to develop innovative drugs (…). We have made a breakthrough and the future presidencies will fill in the gaps”. For his part, Commissioner Tonio Borg welcomed the new interest shown in bringing the cost of medicines down.
It is also worth noting that Romania and Bulgaria signed the joint vaccine procurement agreement, which was signed by virtually all of the other member states at the last “Health” Council in Luxembourg. (IL)