Brussels, 20/05/2008 (Agence Europe) - At the European Parliament on Wednesday 14 May, the Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union (PGEU), which represents community pharmacists, held a lunch-debate on treatment adherence and the help that pharmacists can offer patients to stick to prescribed treatment. Several speakers stressed the importance of treatment adherence. Robert Home, Head of the Centre for behavioural Medicine of the Pharmacy Schools of London University, said that non-adherence was a complex issue. The reason may be voluntary or involuntary and may depend as much on perception (confidence in the medicine, patient's preferences) as on any practical problem (forgetting, level of complexity of the treatment). According to some estimates, every year 194,000 deaths result from patients not following prescribed treatments, costing the EU €125 billion. The debate was organised with the assistance of Slovenian Liberal MEP Mojca Drcar Murko. The PGEU has brought out a bilingual brochure entitled “Cibler l'adhésion - Targeting Adherence”, the electronic version of which is available at http://www.pgeu.eu (O.J.)