Yannis Natsis writes: There is a breakdown in communications between the pharmaceutical industry and Ministers of Health in Europe. The newly-deployed tactic of public, personalised attacks on national decision-makers who express concerns over high prices of medicines, reveal a change in the industry’s lobbying strategy that might damage the relationship irreparably. Continue reading ->
Across the Alps from this week's World Health Organization Executive Board meeting, the first ever antimicrobial resistance benchmark was launched today at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos. Continue reading ->
An alliance of over a hundred industries seeking to curb antimicrobial resistance launched its first report today. According to the report, a number of companies are heavily investing in research and development, and work to improve access to their diagnostic products and preventing therapies. Continue reading ->
A report released today on global funding of research and development for neglected diseases found that global funding has increased but warns that overreliance on funding from the United States, which the report says is "unparalleled," and leads to a heavy concentration of global funding on HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. This overreliance could also lead to change in total global funding, the report found. Continue reading ->
The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) announced today that MedsPaL, its database of information on the patent and licensing status of selected HIV, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis medicines, now extends to patented treatments on the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines. New patents data include medicines for leukaemia, breast cancer and other cancer indications. Continue reading ->
What do investment, trade, intellectual property, health financing, R&D, industrial and medicines regulation policy have in common? They are all important building blocks for the successful promotion of local pharmaceutical manufacturing. As more and more countries are looking into building their own pharmaceutical production capacities, they need to ensure strong policy coherence to be successful. Continue reading ->
Associations representing the life sciences industry in the United Kingdom and Europe today issued a call for cooperation on regulation between the UK and European Union on medicines regulation. Continue reading ->
The new Minister of Health of the Netherlands, Bruno Bruins, came in guns blazing when he put the pharmaceutical industry on notice and announced on 22 November to “change the rules of the game” to tackle, what he called “absurd” medicines pricing, writes Ellen 't Hoen. Continue reading ->
As a consequence of the decision of the United Kingdom to go its separate way, the remaining European Union member states decided yesterday that the European Medicines Agency should move to Amsterdam by the end of March 2019. Continue reading ->
Hidden amongst the thousands of Facebook pages given over to holiday snaps and gossip are groups of patients who have hepatitis C, a disease that affects more than 70 million worldwide and kills around 400,000 people a year. But importantly, these groups of patients from Russia to Australia have got together to help each other import a relatively new class of drug that is able to cure most of the patients who take it. Continue reading ->