At the Ukraine Recovery Conference in London, the European Business Association and Medicines for Europe signed a Memorandum of Agreement to accelerate Ukraine’s integration into the EU pharmaceutical market.
The EU has initiated a major overhaul of EU pharma legislation ranging from regulation to intellectual property and supply chains. The off-patent medicines industry is fully engaged to ensure that reforms transform healthcare delivery and access for patients. Generic and biosimilar medicines help the majority of patients with major chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune conditions and others.
Value added medicines promise affordable, patient-centred innovation which can address unmet medical needs and the crisis in hospitals with personnel shortages and greater demand for healthcare.
As trade associations representing off-patent medicines and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) large, medium and small companies in Europe, directly providing highly skilled jobs, investing heavily in manufacturing R&D and accounting for 24% of API global production and 70% of prescription medicines supplied in Europe, this initiative demonstrates a comprehensive understanding of the complex challenges faced by the European pharmaceutical industry and addresses a pressing concern: the need for a coordinated and robust approach to safeguard the medicine supply chain in Europe.
Generic and biosimilar medicines significantly lower healthcare treatment costs and are essential for enabling competition and vastly improved access to medicines. The stated aim of the EU pharmaceutical and IP legislative reform is to encourage the immediate launch of generic and biosimilar medicines once IP protections expire. The 2023 Medicines for Europe Legal Affairs Conference debated these much-needed reforms for access to medicines.
Affordable generic medicines available on the market just 10 years ago are disappearing and supply is too consolidated, according to new data shared today. This rapid decline and consolidation, higher in certain therapy areas such as cancer care and antibiotics, risks creating more shortages and threatens vital access for patients.
The recently published EU pharmaceutical revision aims to improve medicines affordability, accessibility, and availability in Europe. The secure supply of essential medicines is the foundation to achieve these goals.