The European Commission’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) launched, on Tuesday 16 January, an open call for expressions of interest in joining the Critical Medicines Alliance.
This Alliance is one of the measures to prevent shortages of critical medicines announced by the Commission in October 2023 (see EUROPE 13278/4).
The Alliance will bring together all relevant stakeholders and work to strengthen cooperation between the Commission, national governments, industry and civil society. It will identify challenges, priorities for action and possible policy solutions to the issue of shortages of critical medicines in the EU. The Alliance is a consultative mechanism which will also serve as a network to accelerate the delivery of EU action in this field.
The Critical Medicines Alliance will develop recommendations and provide advice to the Commission, Member States and other EU decision-makers on how to address long-standing medicine shortages. Based on the EU list of critical medicines published by the European Medicines Agency in December 2023, it will focus on medicines with the highest risk of shortage and the greatest impact on healthcare systems and patients.
The five-year alliance will start work next spring and publish its first recommendations by autumn.
For further information: https://aeur.eu/f/ae8 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)