Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-01-Speech-2-145"
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"en.20030701.6.2-145"2
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".
Mr President, in the G10 communication adopted today by the Commission we see patients and public health placed at the centre of the debate on the future direction of European pharmaceuticals policy. This rebalancing of policy-making between legitimate industrial innovation and health needs is an important step in the right direction.
It is only by moving towards a more predictable market environment across Europe that we will be in a position to convince industry to take the needs of Europeans seriously in the years ahead.
The High Level Committee on Health has stated that the public health goal of pharmaceuticals policy is 'to make readily accessible, efficacious, high quality and safe medicines, including their most recent innovative ones, to all those who need them, regardless of income or social status'.
Each of these issues has been addressed in this communication. We have effectively highlighted patients' needs for better information and their need for a stronger voice to influence policy. Efforts in both these areas will support their growing role as important decision-makers for health care. The establishment of an EU-funded European Patients' Platform in February this year is an important step.
We have also targeted the medicines themselves, to build up systems that ensure their safety, quality and efficacy. Here the G10 put the need for stronger systems of pharmacovigilance and relative effectiveness firmly on the agenda. In this way we aim to improve the rational use of medicines. This is a public health goal that underpins our vision for the pharmaceuticals sector.
Relative effectiveness is a very important issue for the European Union. In June 2000 the Council underlined the importance of added therapeutic value both in terms of health protection and from an industrial policy perspective.
Effective medicines must get quickly to the people who need them. This means identifying which medicines are genuinely effective, not just in the controlled environment of a clinical trial, but in general use amongst the wider population. This is the critical issue at stake here.
Relative effectiveness is one key tool towards rational use. But, clearly, we have to consider the role of other actors too. How can we improve rational use of pharmaceuticals at the level of the health care prescriber and the consumer?
A parallel question might be: how can we know if we have improved the rational use of pharmaceuticals? This brings me to the issue of benchmarking. The recommendation to develop indicators for public health has set us a big challenge. For example, to investigate indicators that could monitor what is happening at the health-care prescriber level. Ultimately, the intention is to have a set of indicators that can shed light on what is happening in the pharmaceuticals sector of Member States in terms of the extent to which public health needs are being met and in this way to inform policy development at national and European level.
Finally, the discussion on enlargement is particularly timely. The accession treaties have been signed. Although enlargement is one specific recommendation of the G10, clearly our responses to each recommendation need to adequately reflect the changing environment within the European Union.
The G10 is a first important step to developing a strategic vision of the future health needs of Europeans which is affordable, effective, transparent, inclusive and safe. Properly pursued it will be good for the health of all concerned.
You have previously heard me say here that our health is our wealth. The development of rising public health standards, the extension of disease-free life-years and the increase in life expectancy are shaping features of modern economic development, and pharmaceutical innovation has played a significant role in all of this.
Similarly, from a patient point of view, innovation has yielded dramatic improvements in the dignity and quality of life of patients in recent decades. Now patients are taking a more active role in seeking out information and products.
But at a point where health expenditure is rising, the population is ageing and patients' expectations are increasing, we need to have a strategic vision of how to move forward in this complex field.
There are a number of interlinked issues here. For patients, there is a desire to have more effective, more humane products, brought to market more quickly. There is a desire to have better information on the comparative advantages of products and early warning of adverse reactions. For patients, the availability of clear and authoritative information from the leaflet inside the package, to online at the level of a European health portal, is essential.
For those who finance the health system, there is a need for sustainable budgeting, affordable medicines, manageable demand and responsible behaviour from patients, prescribers and producers alike.
From a public health point of view there is a need to ensure that medicines maintain high quality and safety standards and that adverse reactions are quickly identified and tackled. There is a need to work towards more rational prescribing and consumption patterns, to ensure that we can tackle anti-microbial resistance.
In addition there is a need to ensure that research develops products which tackle health requirements as distinct from lifestyle issues. For example, more must be done to develop products that tackle rare diseases and childhood illnesses. And, in an ageing society, medicines will play an important role in ensuring active and healthy ageing – with all its attendant economic and human benefits.
For the industries involved, there are a range of specific issues which are being presented to you today. But we need to be aware that an increasingly global industry is less likely to prioritise investment in research for the treatments which Europeans will need in 10-20 years' time if they are dealing with a fragmented and unpredictable market. In other words, whilst there will be no shortage of sure-fire lifestyle wonder drugs like Viagra, how can we be sure that the medicines needed to tackle arthritis, Alzheimer's and obesity, to name but a few, will be developed?"@en1
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