Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-01-13-Speech-2-378"
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"en.20090113.29.2-378"2
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"Madam President, I very much welcome the Commissioner’s statement and in particular the tone in which he opened it when he was referring to patients as being the centre of this. I am just taking through this Parliament a report on cross-border health, and fundamental to that is the safety of patients. If I may say so, I wish this had come sooner so that we could have completed your package, along with other health measures within this Parliament. That is not going to be possible, but at least we are on the road.
Perhaps you could mention to at least one of your colleagues that we would also like to see something on needle-stick injuries as part of that safety package.
But we are looking now at the three items that you have referred to. You have referred, rightly, to information to patients and you have dwelt on the detail of that. I believe that patients, and particularly the patients with conditions like neurodegenerative diseases, are very anxious to see this information to patients coming in in a way which is certainly not advertising but does give them confidence that what they read – whether it is on the internet, in the package or in advertising or announcements, shall we say – is bona fide and trustworthy. At the moment they cannot do that and so they are, as you say, at risk.
The second one is counterfeiting. Counterfeiting is one of the curses of our age. It is one thing to have a watch or designer clothing counterfeited, but it is far more serious if it is a medicine. If it is a counterfeit medicine, then patients are at risk and patients can die because of counterfeit medicines. As we have heard, the statistics – 2.5 million packages a year seized at EU borders – have greatly increased over the previous two years, from 2005-2007, and the frightening thing is that it is increasingly within pharmacies and it is not just the internet packages.
Thirdly, you referred to pharmacovigilance. We reckon that 5% of all hospital admissions are the result of adverse drug reactions and that adverse drug reactions cause a fifth of the unnecessary deaths in hospitals. So it is vitally important that we have a simplified, more reliable package on pharmacovigilance too.
If we get these in place, then I believe my report and the safety of patients can go hand in hand, and that must be at the top of our agenda tonight, during the rest of this Parliament and in the Parliament that is to come at the end of the summer."@en1
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